This talk introduces the practice of compassion and offers a guided meditation

All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention. While it’s natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and energizes our awakening hearts and minds. This talk explores the movement from egoic intention to liberating intention…the movement from “my will” to “my hearts will."

Compassion and wise inner speech as a bridge back to the path.

This talk explores a few of the difficult or afflictive states of mind that arise in our human experience and some effective way to work with them through the powerful tools in our practice of concentration, mindfulness, metta and compassion.

Compassion for ourselves in our childhood, teenage years, adulthood + aging process.

How your practice can unfold as you leave retreat includes seeing it as a path of happiness; value of opening to suffering; learning to listen to the truth inside and expressing your caring as compassionate action.

La shares their journey of acceptance and love through the practices and teachings of self-compassion.

In this human realm, healing and spiritual realization are rooted in awakening a love for the life that is here. This talk looks at our habit of feeling we should be different than we are, and the ways that mindfulness and self-compassion help enable us to not only embrace our inner life, but bring genuine healing to others.

A talk for lawyers about the possibilities of the profession and the necessity of developing compassion.

The Divine Abodes of loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity are the places of the awakened heart. Practicing to cultivate these four abodes helps us to access these wonderful and transformative qualities of the open heart.

It is through taking action together that we wield power and experience relief, especially as we expand our notion of sangha beyond the usual boundaries, to all faiths, to all people taking action in accordance with our shared values of compassion, justice and peace. And we bring our own quintessential flavor, our Buddhist practice, our confidence in the Dharma and our commitment to face the way things actually are.

When we cultivate this kind, curious presence to our moment-to-moment experience then clarity, joy, wisdom and compassion can arise in the heart.

When we cultivate this kind, curious presence to our moment to moment experience then clarity, joy, wisdom and compassion can arise in the heart.

Many of us have a tendency to be critical and judgmental of ourselves and others. In meditation, this habit can seem quite strong and can create a lot of suffering. But mindfulness is a wonderful tool to enable us to see these thoughts for what they are, so we can begin to bring wisdom and understanding to them. they then no longer dominate our heart and mind.

If we investigate patterns of emotional suffering or “stuckness,” we’ll discover that under our pain is a fear based belief. Until these beliefs are brought into the light of compassionate awareness, they control and confine our lives. This talk reviews key steps of inquiry and mindfulness that help us realize the freedom that comes with awakening from the grip of beliefs.

How your practice can unfold as you leave retreat includes seeing it as a path of happiness; value of opening to suffering; learning to listen to the truth inside and expressing your caring as compassionate action.

The scales of judgment confine us in a limited sense of self, they restrict the depth and fullness of our loving. This talk explores the genesis of projecting badness on to parts of ourselves and others, and how we can use mindfulness and self-compassion practices to evolve our consciousness and free our hearts.

The teaching of anattā (“not-self”) points to one of the three fundamental areas of liberating insight taught by the Buddha (along with the teachings on impermanence and on suffering or dukkha). Yet anattā can very challenging and confusing for contemporary practitioners. Is there “no self” (as anattā is sometimes translated)? How do we make sense of our feelings of individuality, identity, ancestry, and vocation? How do we address our own personal experiences of woundedness, trauma, and oppression? Are these all simply to be “transcended”? How is a sense of self actually in many ways important for contemporary spiritual development, and how is working with our own individual conditioning, whether psychological or social in origin, central to our liberation? How do we integrate attending to such conditioning with opening as well to the power and energy of experiences beyond the habitual sense of self? In this daylong, we will explore these vital questions primarily in a practical way. Using the metaphors of “thinning the self” and working with a “thick” sense of self, we will cover three aspects of practice: (1) cultivating, in several ways, the “thinning” of the self, both in meditation and in everyday life, including working with the Five Skandhas or “aggregates” of experience; (2) tracking and working with different manifestations of a “thick” sense of self, both as appearing in experience and as hidden to awareness; and (3) opening to experiencing beyond a fixed sense of self, as awareness, compassion, and responsiveness deepen.