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The greatest gift is the gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
2025-02-06
Right Intention
59:12
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Yuka Nakamura
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Our actions are often driven by unconscious or conflicting intentions. How can we align with wholesome intentions and cultivate wholesome mindstates? Based on the Dvedhāvitakkasutta the talk discusses the importance of renunciation, metta and compassion for the path and the transformation of the heart.
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Meditationszentrum Beatenberg
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2025-02-05
Awakening in a Time of Turmoil
67:08
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Donald Rothberg
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We continue to explore the nature of awakening. In the first 2/3 of the talk, we examine the traditional notion of awakening, as going beyond the habitual constructions of experience in all the parts of our lives. These constructions are rooted in reactivity (grasping and pushing away aspects of our experience), and a sense of self along with a world of objects known conceptually (through "signs"). We look also at the more positive sense of awakening to the "signless, boundless, and all luminous," to what the Thai Forest teacher Ajahn Mun calls the "primal mind." Then we ask about whether there are other dimensions to awakening needed for contemporary awakening, and examine in particular what awakening means in a time of turmoil. We take Thich Nhat Hanh as an exemplar--a practitioner dedicated to awakening practicing and teaching amidst the turmoil of war and exile. We outline a number of suggestions and guidelines for those practicing and awakening amidst the current turmoil.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2025-02-05
Guided Meditation: Exploring Some Further Ways We Construct Experience
35:51
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Donald Rothberg
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We start with basic instructions in developing (1) concentration and stability, and (2) mindfulness, and then practice developing these two qualities. With mindfulness practice, we notice the main patterns of thoughts, emotions, and bodily experience. In the second half of the session, we work with being aware of the feeling-tone (linked with the Second Foundation of Mindfulness), noticing moderate (or somewhat greater) pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tones, and what occurs after we notice them. We also attend for a short period of two minutes to the moment-to-moment feeling tones of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and then go back to basic mindfulness practice for the last part of the session.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2025-01-30
The Antidote to Fear: Practicing in Uncertain Times
51:41
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James Baraz
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It seems like many are feeling either a low-level anxiety or fear these days. Fear about their safety, about disasters like fire or floods, about what the future holds. While this is natural and understandable, when our minds get hijacked by fearful thoughts, it is almost impossible to have a wise or appropriate response.
In this talk we explore practicing and skillfully working with fear so that it can transform into courage, compassion and wisdom.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2025-01-26
Liberation through Non-Clinging - Talk
39:56
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-01-26
Liberation through Non-Clinging - Meditation
27:48
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-01-19
Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public: Honoring Dr. King and Building the Beloved Community
66:29
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Kaira Jewel Lingo
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Offered on the Strength to Love retreat over the MLK holiday weekend at IMS, we explore how we can each give rise to bodhicitta, the mind of awakening and love, and support the realization of justice: the expression of love in public. Kaira Jewel first shares about the personal impact of Dr. King on her life, introducing her father, Al Lingo, who briefly offers a few stories of his time in the Civil Rights Movement working directly with Dr. King. She then explores the friendship between Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. King and their common effort to build the Beloved Community. We then look at the importance of cultivating our hearts and minds to be able to support justice in the world, and also how caring for ourselves is caring for others and vice versa. We look at how important it is to connect with our ultimate concern, because this provides an inexhaustible source of energy and confidence. We end with Dr. King's words condemning the war in Vietnam and the damaging effect of militarism on our collective health, and our current bloated military budget.
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Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center
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Strength to Love: Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Embodying Insight in Action - 25WMLK
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2025-01-16
Metta Practice and the Larger World (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
42:17
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Donald Rothberg
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In this session, Donald gives about a 25-minute talk, followed by 15 minutes of discussion. How do we move from a week of metta practice into a time of turmoil and uncertainty in the U.S. and in the world? A number of guidelines and suggestions are given, including keeping the vision of practicing in all parts of one’s life, and keeping close the visions of awakening and of what Dr. King called the “beloved community.” In this time, staying connected with community is also crucial, as are, among many skillful intentions, practicing skillfully with difficult emotions, grounding in the body, cultivating cycles of engagement and withdrawal, and being careful about the amount of information one takes in. The talk ends by pointing to Joanna Macy’s model of three areas of transformation, and the invitation to respond to the call that each of us may hear. Discussion follows.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Mettā Retreat: Teachings and Practices to Cultivate a Wise, Awakened, and Responsive Heart
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2025-01-15
Metta Practice and the Life and Work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
55:59
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Donald Rothberg
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On the birthday of Dr. King, we explore some of the remarkable and powerful parallels between Metta practice and Buddhist teachings, on the one hand, and the life, teachings, and work of Dr. King, on the other. We explore in particular three areas: (1) the connection between Metta and the Christian tradition of acting from love that is central for King; (2) the wisdom perspective of seeing greed, hatred, and delusion, and developing understanding and manifesting non-reactivity through ethical grounding and nonviolence; and (3) the other qualities of the awakened heart--the Brahmavihara for the Buddha, and Dr. King’s way of manifesting qualities in addition to love, such as compassion, empathy, joy, and equanimity.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Mettā Retreat: Teachings and Practices to Cultivate a Wise, Awakened, and Responsive Heart
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2025-01-13
Understanding Impermanence - Week 1 of 6 - Meditation
23:03
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Mark Nunberg
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UNDERSTANDING IMPERMANENCE with Mark Nunberg
This six-week course will explore the Buddha’s teachings on impermanence, the first of the three characteristics that are said to mark all of existence. Sensing deeply the changing and insubstantial nature of all conditioned experience liberates the heart from its entrenched habits of attachment. Participants will be expected to use the teachings as a focus of their daily practice. This ongoing program is designed to deepen our understanding through the study and application of the teachings of the Buddha.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Buddhist Studies: Understanding Impermanence
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2025-01-13
Understanding Impermanence - Week 1 of 6 - Talk
54:43
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Mark Nunberg
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UNDERSTANDING IMPERMANENCE with Mark Nunberg
This six-week course will explore the Buddha’s teachings on impermanence, the first of the three characteristics that are said to mark all of existence. Sensing deeply the changing and insubstantial nature of all conditioned experience liberates the heart from its entrenched habits of attachment. Participants will be expected to use the teachings as a focus of their daily practice. This ongoing program is designed to deepen our understanding through the study and application of the teachings of the Buddha.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Buddhist Studies: Understanding Impermanence
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