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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2024-02-01
Sudden Awakening, Gradual Cultivation:
The Process of Purification
52:56
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James Baraz
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Sometimes it feels as if our practice is taking one step forward and two steps back. Or two steps forward and two steps back. In this talk I want to explore the process of awakening in the context of understanding the trajectory of practice.
Even though it might not seem as if much is happening or that you're truly growing, it's happening anyway. However, there are some things to know about how the process works that can help you develop patience, confidence and inspiration.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2024-01-31
Letting Go of Controlling: The Path of Freedom – Part 1
56:09
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Tara Brach
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While it’s natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence. This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart.
We look at how egoic controlling manifests individually and as a society; the process of awakening from exclusive identification with a separate ego/self; what it means to die into a larger reality and the similarities of psychedelics and meditation in the process of letting go.
The gift of releasing the grip of controlling is true freedom; inhabiting the intrinsic beauty of our beings, and having our lives be an expression of creativity, wisdom and love.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-01-31
Integrating Metta Practice with Wisdom, Awareness, and Insight Practice 2
64:31
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Donald Rothberg
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We continue to explore how we might practice metta (and other heart practices) in a way integrated with mindfulness, wisdom, and insight, building on last week's session. We begin looking at some of the ways historically and culturally that the "mind" and "reason" have been separated from emotion, dating from Plato and the Greeks, and continued in the modern world with the understanding of reason and science as separate from emotion (and the body). This has been a major part of our social and cultural conditioning, evident in how mainstream education occurs, and also linked with gender conditioning. We also examine how, dating from Buddhaghosa's text, the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification), from the 5th century, metta and compassion has been labeled as practices leading to concentration, and not as linked directly with wisdom and awakening. This has been the basis for the 20th century Burmese approaches to metta and mindfulness, which have been the main influences in the West.
However, when we look to the Buddha's actual teachings, as well as later Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings, we find much more of a connection between metta, compassion, and wisdom. We can see this in a number of texts which we explore, including ones in which the heart practices are seen as leading directly to wisdom, and development in awakening.
In the last part of the talk, we explore ways that we can, in our formal and informal practices, integrate metta and wisdom. The talk is followed by discussion.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-01-24
Changing Unhealthy Habits of Eating – A Conversation between Tara and Judson Brewer
1:23:25
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Tara Brach
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Countless people live with shame and distress about their eating. Dr. Judson Brewer, scientist, professor and author of “The Hunger Habit” and many other groundbreaking books, is a thought leader in the field of habit change. He’s also a decades long practitioner of mindfulness, and a dear colleague and friend. In this conversation we explore how combining mindfulness practice with a basic understanding of habit change science can free us from unhealthy eating habits. We also look at the larger societal forces that drive overconsumption, as well as the shame that eating behaviors can evoke.
Pick up your copy of The Hunger Habit at: https://drjud.com/the-hunger-habit/
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-01-24
Integrating Metta Practice with Wisdom, Awareness, and Insight Practice 1
63:04
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Donald Rothberg
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We often hear that the heart of the teachings and practice is to connect wisdom and compassion, clear seeing and the kind heart, developing what Jack Kornfield calls the "wise heart." Yet such a connection or integration can be challenging in several ways. First of all, we have major conditioning in modern Western culture to separate the "mind" and the "heart" (or emotions), as well as the body. Also we find tendencies in the Theravada tradition to see Metta practice as separate from Insight practice, as in the way that Buddhaghosa in the influential text, the Visuddhimagga, lists Metta practice as a form of Concentration practice, and in some of the ways that Metta is taught as a complement to insight practice in the West. In this talk, we begin to explore what it might look like to integrate more fully Metta and wisdom, mindfulness, and insight, both in formal practice and daily life. The talk is followed by discussion.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-01-18
short talk: Exploring freedom as the goal of our practice
23:01
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Jill Shepherd
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A short talk introducing a new theme for the start of the new year
The Way to Freedom: what hinders, and what helps
Each week we'll be looking at some of the common obstacles that cause stress, distress and suffering in our lives, and what we can do to support experiencing more ease, happiness and peace, instead
Focusing on what freedom means to each of us with a written contemplation, then looking briefly at the three core afflictive energies of greed or compulsion, hatred or aversion,, and ignorance or delusion
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Auckland Insight Meditation
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Auckland Insight meetings
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2024-01-17
How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 2
54:17
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Tara Brach
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The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-01-14
Metta Practice with Difficulties and Challenges: Metta for the Difficult Person, Practicing with the Judgmental Mind, and Forgiveness
63:41
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Donald Rothberg
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We begin by exploring the nature of some of the challenges of metta practice, including with difficult emotions, body-states, and thoughts, and how to practice when these challenges arise. The spirit is that of understanding challenges as part of the path of learning. We then focus on one way of deliberating bring metta practice to a challenging situation, through metta with the difficult person, followed by an account of one particular challenge, the “judgmental mind,” its nature and how to practice with it; this includes a short selection from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s’ sermon, “On Judging.” Lastly, there is an introduction to forgiveness practice.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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January Metta 2024
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