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Dharma Talks
2021-03-27 Deathbed Goal Challenge 13:51
Amita Schmidt
The deathbed goal is a practice that reminds you to cultivate, in the here and now, qualities which you most want to manifest in this human life.
Dharma Zephyr Insight Meditation Community

2021-03-20 The Truth of Impermanence and Death as Transformation 48:10
Alisa Dennis
Impermanence can be found all around us in Nature. Our bodies exist in Nature and so we are impermanent too. This is an exploration of mindfulness of death and dying as an opportunity to practice letting go while we are living, as preparation for focusing our attention with ease and alertness as we take our last breath in these bodies. Maranasati supports present moment awareness and the deepening of appreciation for life. The deathbed can provide an extraordinary opportunity to cultivate embodied awareness and compassion for self and others. An exploration of death not as the end of life, but as transportation into another realm of consciousness.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life with Eugene Cash, Victoria Cary, Alisa Dennis, PhD and Hakim Tafari

2021-03-20 Inquiry: Repeating Questions 10minutes each way each question 8:33
Eugene Cash
Tell me something you know about death. Tell me something you don’t know about death.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life with Eugene Cash, Victoria Cary, Alisa Dennis, PhD and Hakim Tafari

2021-03-19 Normalizing Death 47:51
Eugene Cash
Exploring our understanding of death conventionally and from a Buddhist perspective
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life with Eugene Cash, Victoria Cary, Alisa Dennis, PhD and Hakim Tafari

2021-03-19 Inquiry: Monologue 10minutes per person 33:45
Eugene Cash
What is your personal relationship with Death?
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life with Eugene Cash, Victoria Cary, Alisa Dennis, PhD and Hakim Tafari

2021-03-16 One Year Hence day 2 -- Impermanence, Death, and Equanimity 39:39
Kim Allen
Second of 5
Insight Santa Cruz

2021-03-15 24 talk: impermanence 33:23
Jill Shepherd
An introduction to the three universal characteristics of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self, focusing on impermanence then briefly touching into death contemplation
Te Moata Retreat Center :  Finding the heart of freedom

2021-01-27 Maranasati: Normalizing Death 58:38
Eugene Cash
Buddhist myth includes an alternative version of the Buddha's path in alignment with the Heavenly Messengers. Gotama Siddhartha wakes up to his 'intoxication' with youth, health, and life. He lets go of being intoxicated and seeks awakening.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Heavenly Messengers: Awakening through Illness, Aging, and Death with Debra Chamberlin-Taylor, Bonnie Duran, PhD, Leslie Booker and Eugene Cash

2021-01-03 The Value of Death 25:53
Ayya Medhanandi
This path takes us to our true home through cultivating sanctity, and understanding the value of death: the death of greed, hatred and delusion. When we see all things as impermanent, death gives definition to our life. It delimits our experience. That’s how we learn how to love – because if things were permanent, we wouldn’t know the meaning of love. We would not know how to love. And that would be a terrible loss – not to know, not to learn, how to love.
Portland Friends of the Dhamma :  Ever Present Refuge

2020-12-13 Love Everyone Or Die 24:23
Ayya Medhanandi
We may speak of or feel that we know about death but until we truly contemplate, approach and move into death, what do we know? This is a tale about looking into the eye of a tortoise shell butterfly while it lay dying on the shrine. Straining as it reached up towards us waving its frail antennae when it heard our chanting, we felt at one even with this tiniest of creatures - who also wanted only to be loved.
Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC)

2020-12-11 'Unestablished' Citta 40:55
Ajahn Sucitto
Citta can have sore spots, particularly volatile reactions that spin it out into planning. There’s the possibility of not being in that compulsive grip, of turning to the deathless element. Citta can be trained to withdraw into its own stillness, its own knowing.
Bodhi College Citta: Mind, Heart, Spirit

2020-12-10 Q&A 2 52:56
Ajahn Sucitto
Relationship between citta, mano and viññāna; why doesn’t citta appear in the chain of dependent co-arising; what is samudayo; the nature of contact and perception conditioning feeling; how can one prepare for death; skills and developments of the mano function and how that mixes in with citta; helping other people; bubbling energy in meditation; limiting external impingements on citta in householder life.
Bodhi College Citta: Mind, Heart, Spirit

2020-09-16 The Four Remembrances 50:42
Tara Brach
When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry. This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices—Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness—that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

2020-09-06 Q&A – Desire, Hatred, Deathless and Boundaries 44:45
Ajahn Sucitto
How to manage inconvenient feelings of attraction; reacting impulsively towards sexual desire and hatred; working with boredom and drowsiness; how does one turn towards the deathless; is nibbana “a ground of being”; what does the use of “internal and external” mean?
Cittaviveka At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down

2020-08-19 The Inner Stopping 26:54
Ayya Medhanandi
Wherever we go the mind does not remain happy - unless we fully awaken. How can we end the restless tides and remain inwardly stable, content within ourselves like the well-hewn wheel that stood still when it stopped rolling and did not fall down? Purifying our bodily acts, speech, and mind in the Buddha's gradual training, we go beyond the eight worldly winds, coming to cessation, to the Deathless.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  Chapin Mill Retreat

2020-07-15 Meditation: Listening to Life 48:41
Tara Brach
The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence. This meditation ends with a tribute to Thich Nhat Hanh’s life and a reading from his writings on death and life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

2020-06-20 Mantra of Compassion 14:15
Ayya Medhanandi
Fear is the absence of love. Our inner purification is a movement away from fear to the embodiment of pure love - even to love the dying moment. We grow in stillness and peace as if sailing an ocean of joy, in the peace of the mind's deepest waters where we can touch the Deathless. A guided meditation and reflections offered during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Madison Insight Meditation Group

2020-06-10 Exploring Aging, Sickness and Death as Transformative Practices 39:13
Matthew Daniell
Cambridge Insight Meditation Center

2020-05-24 The Quail's Tale: A Path to Harmlessness 41:38
Ayya Medhanandi
Praising Truth for its own sake, we lean in the direction of Truth. We make our intention not to harm by body, speech, or thought. Harmlessness leads to selflessness. Selflessness leads to the Deathless. To boundless compassion. It will save us from the flames of greed, violence, and delusion raging around us. Like the baby quail. What saved it from the forest fire was the purity of its own truth developed over lifetimes. A talk given in a Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC) zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC)

2020-05-12 31b The Body 22:03
Bhante Bodhidhamma
Unfortunately the laptop stopped! Luckily, I was coming to an end. Death contemplation is taught by the Buddha, see my Talk 03,04,45. I would simply have said that body as subjective experience is to be investigated and is a path itself to liberation from suffering.
Satipanya Retreat Centre

2020-05-09 Loss, Grief and Death: Impermanence in Pandemic Times 56:25
James Baraz
The Buddha said to reflect each day on the facts of old age, sickness and death. He also said to to come to terms with the fact that everything and everyone near and dear to us will be separated from us. In these Covid-19 days our practice becomes letting go of what was and adjust to a new way of being. This practice of impermanence includes opening to loss, grief and death which is explored in this talk.
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley IMCB Regular Talks

2020-05-05 31 Body as Meditation Object 22:01
Bhante Bodhidhamma
Unfortunately the laptop stopped! Luckily, I was coming to an end. Death contemplation is taught by the Buddha, see my Talk 03,04,45. I would simply have said that body as subjective experience is to be investigated and is a path itself to liberation from suffering.
Satipanya Retreat Centre Talks on the Middle Length Discourses

2020-05-03 Dhamma Stream Online Puja: The Gift of Vulnerability 32:03
Ajahn Sucitto
It’s possible to meet suffering with an open heart. If the heart can open to grief, pain and vulnerability, a new view is possible – one beyond the cycle of birth and death. Keep the heart open to Dhamma, rooted in faith and goodwill. This is the Path to the deathless. *Sutta References: Therīgatha 6:2; Samyutta Nikaya 12:23; Samyutta Nikaya 1:10
Cittaviveka At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down

2020-05-01 On the Cross of Our Illusions: A Guided Dying Meditation and Reflections 42:36
Ayya Medhanandi
To simulate the natural process of death is to experience the impermanence of the five aggregates and a pure awareness that knows the inherent emptiness of things as they truly are. Dying is a potent doorway for liberation of mind and the best death we can die is shattering the ego. Then we can let go of fear once and for all. This guided meditation was given during a death and dying retreat in an Australian church in 2004.
Australian Insight Meditation Network

2020-04-16 talk: hope, hopelessness and equanimity 26:29
Jill Shepherd
Exploring ways to open more fully to the truth of impermanence and death, then looking at equanimity as an antidote to any tendency to swing between hope and hopelessness
Auckland Insight Meditation

2020-04-05 05 Contemplation of Death again! 32:01
Bhante Bodhidhamma
Satipanya Retreat Centre Talks on the Middle Length Discourses

2020-04-05 04 Contemplation of Death - Living more awake 21:41
Bhante Bodhidhamma
This is the Buddha's advice on how we should contemplate death in order to over come our fear. The outcome, paradoxically, is to live a fuller life.
Satipanya Retreat Centre Talks on the Middle Length Discourses

2020-04-03 03 Coronavirus and the Contemplation of Death 18:19
Bhante Bodhidhamma
What different positions people take re Lockdown. Importance of coming terms with death.
Satipanya Retreat Centre Talks on the Middle Length Discourses

2020-03-11 Letting Go - Release - Freedom (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 60:35
Eugene Cash
Satipatthana - Four Foundations of Mindfulness offers us specific meditation practices with the body, breath, in four postures, in all activities, with the elements, with death, vedana, the heart/mind and the dharmas including hindrances and the seven factors of awakenings. Each of these practices includes a through line: One abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. The not clinging to body, heart, mind or any experience is both the foundation of the Buddha's teaching and the doorway to freedom. It's the experience of coming into alignment with ' he way things are.'
Spirit Rock Meditation Center March Monthlong

2020-03-04 From the Ordinary Habitual Mind to the Buddha Mind 16: Working with Our Psychological Conditioning 3 62:28
Donald Rothberg
We begin by pointing to how combining traditional Buddhist training with transforming psychological and social conditioning and unresolved material suggests the contours of a contemporary path of awakening. We then identify some of the main areas of the contemporary “shadow,” of unconscious, unresolved conditioning and developmental wounds, such as anger, fear, death, shame, conflict, trauma, grief, sexuality, and so on. We then give a “map” of four stages in the transformation of the shadow (particularly in a meditative context), starting with finding ways to access the shadow, then learning to be with and explore the shadow, then transforming the shadow, and then integrating the shadow work with daily life.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks

2020-02-23 Q&A 55:48
Ajahn Sucitto
What is mindfulness; What is investigation; Unusual images arising in meditation; Death and afterlife; How to deal with vulnerability of heart?
Emoyeni Retreat Centre :  Clearing and Renewal

2020-02-20 Practising with Death and Dying 2:35:07
Rob Burbea
CRUCIAL NOTE: It is highly unlikely that this talk will be properly or adequately understood without a prior very good working familiarity and competence – both in actual practice and conceptually – with Soulmaking Dharma teachings and practices, as well as with Insight Meditation. Without this background it may be that the talk will in fact be misunderstood, and it is unlikely that the talk will be helpful. Please note too that much of the material in this series of talks (In Psyche’s Orchard) is based on or continues explorations of material laid out in a particular previous series (Four Circles, Four Parables of Stone and Light). In Psyche’s Orchard was recorded by Rob at his home.
Gaia House In Psyche's Orchard

2020-02-11 Four Noble Truths & Mindfulness of Death (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 52:15
John Martin
This talk provides an overview of the Four Noble Truths, with primary focus on the Noble Truth of Dukkha and the Noble Truth of the Cause of Dukkha. Mindfulness of death is reviewed as a support for practice.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center February Monthlong

2019-12-17 Death and the Poignancy of Life 61:37
Matthew Brensilver
William James said that death was the ‘worm at the core’ of the human condition that turns us all into ‘melancholy metaphysicians.’ A century later, awareness of mortality is documented to affect our thinking and emotional lives in powerful ways. It figures prominently in Buddhist practice. In what ways does consciousness of death distorts our view and lead us away from wisdom and compassion? Alternatively, how can we open to the truth of finitude such that our heart is softened? Can we intuit the freedom or love that might be released were we more deeply at peace with our mortality? In this evening program, we’ll consider the way death can harden or soften our heart – and how dharma practice might lead us to a life that feels complete. All are welcome.
New York Insight Meditation Center

2019-11-13 Doors To The Deathless 43:52
Jaya Rudgard
The door of non-clinging is always open. Readings from verses on the Faith Mind and Tilopa's "Song Of The Maharudra"
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center Three-Month Retreat - Part 2

2019-10-15 One Taste: Return To The Root 64:33
Kittisaro
The merging of the Mahayana and Theravada. Kuan Yin's method. Turning the mind to the deathless.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge October 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2019-10-09 Entering The Mula Sutta: Journey To Freedom 33:16
Kittisaro
Born of desire are all things. Ruled by mindfulness are all things. Yielding deliverance as essence are all things. Turning the mind to the deathless.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge October 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2019-09-28 Coming into Presence through Reflecting on Death and Birth 50:31
Brian Lesage
This talk offers reflections on how reflecting on the inevitability of our death as well as the wonder of our birth establishes presence in a powerful and transformative way.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center Three-Month Retreat - Part 1

2019-08-28 17 talk: impermanence and death 48:34
Jill Shepherd
Exploring the universal characteristic of anicca-impermanence in terms of the body, and beginning to contemplate our own mortality as a way to gradually release fear of death
Te Moata Retreat Center :  Freedom Here and Now

2019-08-12 A Matter of Death, Life, Truth and Recovery 24:13
Ayya Medhanandi
Call suffering by its true name and the face of the Dhamma will emerge from within us. We meet the truth of impermanence, of death, and the universality of pain as we carve out the understanding of who we are and why we are here. Nourish the mind with virtue and shine the light to our true home, to insights that repair what has been broken and free us from fear, anxiety, and the many sufferings we have endured.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-11 Death - Portal of Deliverance 38:50
Ayya Medhanandi
Contemplating the 4 elements, the 32 parts of the living body, and the remains of the body in a charnel ground, we gain a deeper understanding of impermanence and the intrinsic impersonal and empty nature of the body. Seeing it for what it truly is can free us from fear of death. We study it and gradually unveil the true gift of death as a portal to our liberation.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  For Our Long Lasting Benefit

2019-08-10 Rapping on the Coffin 25:23
Dhammadīpā
a talk on death and its teaching of radical honesty
Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery

2019-07-16 Taking the Problem out of Pain 47:45
Shaila Catherine
In this talk, Shaila Catherine encourages practitioners to view illness and pain as opportunities to practice equanimity, patience, and mindfulness of the body. When we are sick or in pain, we can still practice being attentive to present conditions, and reflect that all beings are all also subject to illness and death. Illness is not wrong; it is inevitable. The more we resist this fact, the more mental suffering we add to our physical difficulties. When we learn to be present with both pleasant and unpleasant feelings, we will know an experience of profound peace.
Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
In collection: Meditation in Hard Times

2019-06-21 Reflections on Death and Being Born (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 44:11
Brian Lesage
This talk shares how reflecting on our death and our precious birth situates mindfulness in a transformative way.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Spring Insight Meditation Retreat

2019-05-15 Grateful for This Moment of Life (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 51:28
Eugene Cash
Gratitude arises as the 5th Brahma Vihara. It is a quality of heart ripened by our coming into harmony with the reality of life and death. As we waken to the truth that this is the only moment there is, we discover the magic, mystery and beauty of simply Being.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life

2019-05-14 The Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness of Death (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 55:48
Bob Stahl
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life

2019-05-12 Working Wisely with Challenges of Practice and Life and Death (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 48:33
Bob Stahl
How to work wisely with the 5 hindrances as well as working wisely in meeting life and death.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life

2019-05-11 Do Not Waste Your Life (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 48:21
Eugene Cash
Exploring Maranasati: Mindfulness of Death/Awakening to Life. This talk highlights the normalcy of Death. We survey how death is related to in various Buddhist traditions as well as discussing personal experience of death as part of contemplative practice.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Maranasati: Contemplating Death, Awakening to Life

2019-04-08 A Beautiful Truth (Retreat at Spirit Rock) 44:08
Ayya Anandabodhi
Exploring the 5 aggregates, aging, sickness & death
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Mindfulness of Breathing

2019-03-27 The Four Remembrances 50:43
Tara Brach
When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry. This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices – Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness – that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

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