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Dharma Talks
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2020-12-23
Heart, Liver, Diaphragm, Spleen, Lungs/Lungs, Spleen, Diaphragm, Liver, Heart
25:05
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Bob Stahl
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We are happy to announce a special opportunity to practice the 32 Parts of the Body meditation, which is rarely taught in the West. This practice deepens insight into impermanence and non-self by penetrating into the true nature and wonders of the body. We will also explore how the body interrelates with the four primary elements of earth (solidity), air (motion), fire (temperature), and water (liquidity).
This methodical practice of the 32 Parts of the Body Meditation can build immense levels of concentration, potentialities for healing, and experience the taste of deep freedom and peace.
This is the 15th year of offering this class at Insight Santa Cruz and it has been truly wonderful. People have frequently reported developing a whole new relationship to their bodies with greater wisdom and compassion. We will also be hopefully doing a tour of the Cabrillo Anatomy lab to get a deeper experience of the body.
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Insight Santa Cruz
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2020-12-16
Empathy and non-clinging
40:27
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The clinging reflex constricts citta, causing the loss of intelligence and sensitivity. Allowing things to shift and change lets us live more harmoniously and respectfully. In meditation, practice bringing attention back to the entire body, not fixating on any one point. Where citta and body come together, the all-encompassing world can be reviewed with goodwill and compassion.
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Cittaviveka
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Living, Dying and Liberation
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2020-12-13
The Art and Practice of Forgiveness
4:23:24
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Phillip Moffitt,
Noliwe Alexander
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The art of forgiveness begins with connecting to the heart. The practice involves learning skills such as metta, mindful acknowledgement, and compassion. Practicing these skills enables you to free yourself from painful identification with past events.
This is a day to bring remorse or grief about past actions and move beyond feelings of guilt and shame. Likewise, if someone has wronged you, you will be guided toward holding them in accountability without closing your heart. Additionally, forgiveness practice will move you toward clarity and acceptance for the ways you have let yourself down.
Practicing forgiveness allows you to move from a heavy, remorseful heart and a reactive mind to a heart that’s light but still feels regret, and a mind that is calm and clear. The day will be held with periods of guided silent sitting and walking meditation practice, instruction in the art and practice of forgiveness, and a forgiveness ceremony, with opportunities to ask questions to the instructors.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2020-12-05
Awakening our Hearts: Uprooting the Conditions for Suffering
23:54
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JD Doyle
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During this half-day, we will gather as a community of white people to investigate the impacts of racism and white supremacy culture in our hearts, minds, and communities. The Buddha’s teachings form a liberatory framework that helps us to explore racial conditioning. Using the Buddhist teachings, we will gain insight into how conditioning causes suffering both individually and collectively. With curiosity, compassion, and humility, we will learn together to uproot the delusions of separation and to nurture communities that foster liberation for all beings.
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Insight Santa Cruz
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2020-12-02
Head hair, Body hair, Nails, Teeth, Skin, Flesh, Sinews, bones, Bone Marrow, Kidneys/Kidneys, Bone Marrow, Bones, Sinews, Flesh, Skin, Teeth, Nails, Body Hair, Head Hair
41:43
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Bob Stahl
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We are happy to announce a special opportunity to practice the 32 Parts of the Body meditation, which is rarely taught in the West. This practice deepens insight into impermanence and non-self by penetrating into the true nature and wonders of the body. We will also explore how the body interrelates with the four primary elements of earth (solidity), air (motion), fire (temperature), and water (liquidity).
This methodical practice of the 32 Parts of the Body Meditation can build immense levels of concentration, potentialities for healing, and experience the taste of deep freedom and peace.
This is the 15th year of offering this class at Insight Santa Cruz and it has been truly wonderful. People have frequently reported developing a whole new relationship to their bodies with greater wisdom and compassion. We will also be hopefully doing a tour of the Cabrillo Anatomy lab to get a deeper experience of the body.
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Insight Santa Cruz
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2020-11-20
Freedom From the Inner Critic: Using the Tools of Wisdom and Compassion
4:07:37
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Mark Coleman
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Do you experience the painful effects of self-judgment, or hurt from your mind's harsh attacks on yourself? If you wish to be free from the torment of the inner critic, then this day is for you.
During our time together, you will learn to work with self-judgment with clarity and skill and develop greater self-acceptance, self-compassion and forgiveness as antidotes to criticism. The day will include a combination of talks and interactive exercises, mindfulness and kindness techniques. This will be a practical and experiential day retreat, taught with lightness, compassion and humor and the need to not take ourselves too seriously!
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2020-11-12
Across the Great Divide: What the Dharma Can Offer for Healing Our Country
52:09
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James Baraz
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However you feel about the outcome, the presidential election has underscored the polarization that currently exists in our country. As long as each side mistrusts and fears the other, we cannot truly have peace and work together to make this a better society.
What does the Dharma offer to help heal this divide? How can our practice support us individually and collectively to open our hearts with compassion and bridge the gulf with those who seem so different from us? How can we create better understanding and cut through "othering" so that each of us can contribute to greater healing rather than more divisiveness?
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2020-11-11
32 Parts of the Body—Flesh, Sinews, Bones, Bone Marrow, Kidneys/Kidneys, Bone Marrow, Bones, Sinews, Flesh
37:08
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Bob Stahl
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We are happy to announce a special opportunity to practice the 32 Parts of the Body meditation, which is rarely taught in the West. This practice deepens insight into impermanence and non-self by penetrating into the true nature and wonders of the body. We will also explore how the body interrelates with the four primary elements of earth (solidity), air (motion), fire (temperature), and water (liquidity).
This methodical practice of the 32 Parts of the Body Meditation can build immense levels of concentration, potentialities for healing, and experience the taste of deep freedom and peace.
This is the 15th year of offering this class at Insight Santa Cruz and it has been truly wonderful. People have frequently reported developing a whole new relationship to their bodies with greater wisdom and compassion. We will also be hopefully doing a tour of the Cabrillo Anatomy lab to get a deeper experience of the body.
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Insight Santa Cruz
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2020-11-04
Practicing after Election Day
1:10:00
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Donald Rothberg
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The morning after Election Day in the U.S., with the result in the Presidential election still uncertain, we explore a number of ways of practicing--in both a more inner and a more outer way. Participants, who include several from outside the U.S., share some of what they are experiencing, and we explore several ways of working with challenging emotions, thoughts, and body-states. We emphasize the importance of compassion for self and others, empathy--including across lines of difference, working with one's own views, participation in a community, and connection with traditions and approaches--such as that of the bodhisattva--that give one resources for the "long haul." Eve Decker brings in a vital further resource--song--three times during the session, with "Sending You Light," "We Who Believe in Freedom," and the dedication of merit from the Chinese Pure Land tradition.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2020-10-28
32 Parts of the Body—Flesh, Sinews, Bones, Bone Marrow, Kidneys
52:29
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Bob Stahl
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We are happy to announce a special opportunity to practice the 32 Parts of the Body meditation, which is rarely taught in the West. This practice deepens insight into impermanence and non-self by penetrating into the true nature and wonders of the body. We will also explore how the body interrelates with the four primary elements of earth (solidity), air (motion), fire (temperature), and water (liquidity).
This methodical practice of the 32 Parts of the Body Meditation can build immense levels of concentration, potentialities for healing, and experience the taste of deep freedom and peace.
This is the 15th year of offering this class at Insight Santa Cruz and it has been truly wonderful. People have frequently reported developing a whole new relationship to their bodies with greater wisdom and compassion. We will also be hopefully doing a tour of the Cabrillo Anatomy lab to get a deeper experience of the body.
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Insight Santa Cruz
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2020-10-19
Loving No Matter What
1:13:41
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Dawn Scott
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The turbulence of our times is asking us to discover for ourselves how to love. The word love has many associations. However, the love of compassion and equanimity is vigorous and peaceful, open to pain yet free of suffering, urgent with a vision of freedom yet patient. It reveals a vast and immense heart that can look on and immediately be in touch with beauty and horror and stay steady, loving no matter what. During our time together--respecting our reactivity, overwhelm, and other afflictive states--we'll explore the heart's wide and deep capacity for compassion and equanimity.
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Flagstaff Insight Meditation Community
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FIMC Monday Night Talks
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2020-10-14
32 Parts of the Body—Skin, Teeth, Nails, Body Hair, Head Hair
32:44
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Bob Stahl
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We are happy to announce a special opportunity to practice the 32 Parts of the Body meditation, which is rarely taught in the West. This practice deepens insight into impermanence and non-self by penetrating into the true nature and wonders of the body. We will also explore how the body interrelates with the four primary elements of earth (solidity), air (motion), fire (temperature), and water (liquidity).
This methodical practice of the 32 Parts of the Body Meditation can build immense levels of concentration, potentialities for healing, and experience the taste of deep freedom and peace.
This is the 15th year of offering this class at Insight Santa Cruz and it has been truly wonderful. People have frequently reported developing a whole new relationship to their bodies with greater wisdom and compassion. We will also be hopefully doing a tour of the Cabrillo Anatomy lab to get a deeper experience of the body.
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Insight Santa Cruz
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2020-10-07
32 Parts of the Body—Head hair, Body hair, Nails, Teeth, Skin
62:41
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Bob Stahl
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We are happy to announce a special opportunity to practice the 32 Parts of the Body meditation, which is rarely taught in the West. This practice deepens insight into impermanence and non-self by penetrating into the true nature and wonders of the body. We will also explore how the body interrelates with the four primary elements of earth (solidity), air (motion), fire (temperature), and water (liquidity).
This methodical practice of the 32 Parts of the Body Meditation can build immense levels of concentration, potentialities for healing, and experience the taste of deep freedom and peace.
This is the 15th year of offering this class at Insight Santa Cruz and it has been truly wonderful. People have frequently reported developing a whole new relationship to their bodies with greater wisdom and compassion. We will also be hopefully doing a tour of the Cabrillo Anatomy lab to get a deeper experience of the body.
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Insight Santa Cruz
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2020-09-27
When No Season is Too Much
30:15
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Sidelined by COVID, we are compelled to look at ourselves, at each other, at the world caught in pandemic restrictions we never imagined were possible. Besieged by fear and vulnerability, beings lack insight into the truth of things find no safe refuge. The time is ripe for waking up to gain freedom from the eight worldly winds and abide in higher states of mind. With peace of heart, wisdom and compassion run deep such that no season will be too much.
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Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC)
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2020-08-22
Metta, Mantra, Addiction, Recovery: Three Questions
21:39
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Ayya Medhanandi
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We are braver than we know and can endure more than we realize if there is a readiness to renounce and be creative. Learn to refine, adapt, repeat teachings until they are embodied, and deeply listen to all that life offers. Reaching out to others according to our skills and strength, connect and offer guidance if it is welcome. Compassion born of growing wisdom will be our trustworthy compass.
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Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
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Chapin Mill Retreat
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2020-08-21
In the Stream of the Noble Ones
32:00
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Think of yourself as a spiritual warrior. What is the danger at hand? What is our true protection? Where is safety? Be ever aware. Staying close to the Dhamma, we will inevitably grow close to the Buddha. We shall uphold virtue foremost through wholesome friendships, purify intention, action, and speech, at rest or work or during mental cultivation, and embody the noble wisdom and compassion of the Buddha by setting our feet in his very footprints.
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Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
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Chapin Mill Retreat
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2020-08-20
A Safe Domain: How the Quail Escaped a Hawk
27:01
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Ayya Medhanandi
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The contemplative path of purifying the mind is the most important journey of all - inward. Just as the little quail that tricked a hawk, we no longer fall prey to the 'maras' of the world, safe in our proper ancestral domain of virtue. Therein, the heart of generosity is further refined into qualities of joy, selflessness, compassion and wisdom, thus benefiting ourselves and all beings.
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Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
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Chapin Mill Retreat
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2020-08-19
Deepening Our Practice in the Pandemic 4: The Foundations of Wise Speech 1: Cultivating Empathy
66:30
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Donald Rothberg
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We start with a brief review of the three previous talks on deepening practice during the pandemic (and other crises), including clarifying three broad areas of practice: Formal meditation practice, daily life practice, and work, service, and/or activism as practice. In this session, we explore the foundations of Wise Speech as practice, mentioning three foundations. The first two include (1) the ethical guidelines given by the Buddha regarding skillful speech, and (2) developing presence and mindfulness during speech (including listening). We focus most of the time on the third foundation of cultivating empathic connection with another, clarifying the difference between empathy and compassion, giving some of the findings of studies in neuroscience about empathy, and examining what blocks empathy. We then work with a simple (yet powerful) empathy practice of tuning into (1) emotions, and (2) what matters, and move into a period of discussion.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2020-07-29
Your Awake Heart is Calling You
50:50
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Tara Brach
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As individuals and societies, we are pulled by both the insecurity of our evolutionary past, and by our awake heart, our capacity for mindfulness and compassion. This talk explores the ways we can listen to and respond to the call of our awake heart, by training ourselves to open to vulnerability (our own and others) and widen the circles of compassion (a favorite from the 2017 archives).
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-07-19
Handling Difficult Feeling
48:26
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The unawakened citta always reacts and tries to interpret what’s happening. Rather than interpret experience, notice the stress building up. Hover over the difficult feeling and equanimity, compassion, goodwill gradually comes in.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Unrestricted Awareness
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2020-07-16
Buddhist Practice and the Transformation of Racism 2: -Meditation and Inner Work
1:19:17
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Donald Rothberg
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In this second talk in the series, we first review the main "wisdom" perspectives presented last week, that give us some orientation toward understanding and transforming racism. Then we explore the second area of training: meditation and inner work, identifying four main themes and practices, the first three of which are supported significantly by working in small groups: (1) understanding and working with "implicit bias"; (2) cultivating mindfulness of our racial conditioning and the experiences which arise in investigating race and racism; (3) heart practices like compassion and empathy; and (4) the importance of continuing to access, as best we can, deeper experiences of our being.
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Insight Meditation Tucson
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Buddhist Practice and the Transformation of Racism
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2020-07-01
Shame, Healing and Transformation
48:43
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Tara Brach
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Being at war with ourselves blocks us from evolving our consciousness and living from our hearts. This talk distinguishes between toxic and healthy shame, as well as shame about our individual self and our group identity. We explore how, with self-compassion and courageous honesty, we can respond to negative, painful feelings about ourselves in a way that serves awakening and alignment with our deepest values.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-06-24
Buddhist Practice and the Transformation of Racism 2
65:20
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Donald Rothberg
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Traditional Buddhist training occurs through development in wisdom, ethics, and meditation. We use this model to help us to understand Buddhist practice that aims to transform racism. We start by reviewing briefly the first three perspectives offered in the previous week, which fall under training in wisdom. Then we look at how ethical practice and in particular the practice of non-harming can be the basis for action, based on an understanding of ethical practice as guiding both one's personal behavior and one's responses to harm in one's communities and society. Lastly, we explore meditative training and how in particular mindfulness and compassion play central roles in the transformation of racism.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2020-06-20
Mantra of Compassion
14:15
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Ayya Medhanandi
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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.
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Madison Insight Meditation Group
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2020-06-10
Anger and Transformation
49:21
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Tara Brach
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The purpose of anger is to let us know there’s an obstacle to our wellbeing, and to energize us to act. While natural and necessary for survival and thriving, this powerful energy often possesses us and leads to suffering.
This talk explores how we can use the RAIN meditation in our personal and societal life, to meet anger with a mindful, compassionate presence. Freed from the identification with a limited, separate reactive self, we can listen to the message of anger, draw on the purity of its energy, and respond from our natural intelligence, creativity and care.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-06-05
The Unequivocal Law of Kamma
13:44
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Responding to questions about social change during pandemic time protests: seeing that we are the owners of our actions, subject to the law of kamma, we can embody the Buddha's teachings by respecting all beings with compassion, nonviolence and our foundation in virtue, and choosing wise leaders who uphold these principles.
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Ottawa Buddhist Society
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2020-06-05
Bowing On Two Knees: Covid Compassion and Nonviolence
19:27
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Ayya Medhanandi
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When change and unrest foment around us, we must guard the mind and protect it from disruptive emotions such as fear or anger that may lead us to speak or act unskillfully. In this pandemic of moral decay and heightened fear, seeing how we are not in control, we care both for ourselves and others, morally and spiritually. To bring reform or healing in the world, we speak or act from an inner quiet, not boiling with anger or resentment, but from a heart tempered with patience, compassion, wisdom and peace. A talk given online during Covid-19 and global anti-racism protests.
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Ottawa Buddhist Society
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2020-05-24
The Quail's Tale: A Path to Harmlessness
41:38
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Ayya Medhanandi
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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.
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Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC)
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2020-05-13
From the Ordinary Mind to the Buddha Mind 18: Transforming Reactivity 2
69:47
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Donald Rothberg
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We first review the main themes from last time: (1) the nature of reactivity, and dukkha as reactivity in the Buddha's teachings, (2) the nature of awakening and freedom as liberation from reactivity, and (3) four main ways to practice with reactivity. We then look more deeply, noticing that very commonly reactivity is mixed with insight, discernment, intelligence, or something important or valuable, as when I become reactive when someone doesn't keep an agreement, or at social injustice. We explore how to transform reactivity by separating out what is valuable from the reactivity, in a number of ways, so that we can keep the insight or intelligence, and use it as the basis for wise, compassionate action. We close the talk with Eve Decker singing, "Simple Truth," about skillful ways to work with reactive self-judgment, and then have a period of discussion, including questions.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2020-05-01
The Currency of Covid: Protection from Harm Through Spiritual Awakening
24:16
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Waking up to our spiritual wealth, we learn the true currency of Covid - it is not fear and frailty but courage, compassion, loving-kindness, community and connection. We see what is protection for ourselves and for each other, dwelling with the Dhamma, the Truth, as our safety - our island and refuge.
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Ottawa Buddhist Society
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2020-04-29
Sheltering In Love (Part 6): Loneliness as a Portal to Sacred Presence (Part 2)
51:05
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Tara Brach
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The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness predating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-04-22
Sheltering in Love (Part 5): Loneliness as a Portal to Sacred Presence (Part 1)
44:51
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Tara Brach
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The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These next two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness predating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-04-15
Sheltering in Love (Part 4)
43:21
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Tara Brach
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During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path - practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world. Talk 4 explores how the difficult emotions we all face can become direct portals to an inner refuge of sacred space.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-04-08
Sheltering in Love - Part 3
45:48
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Tara Brach
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During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life.
These talks explore the bodhisattva path – practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-04-01
Sheltering In Love (Part 2)
41:59
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Tara Brach
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During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life.
These talks explore the bodhisattva path – practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-03-25
Sheltering In Love (Part 1)
45:58
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Tara Brach
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During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path – practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2020-03-14
Coronavirus and the support of the Dharma - Part 1
31:38
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Zohar Lavie
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We are living through an unusual period. As coronavirus spreads, much of what we take for granted is being shaken.
There is uncertainty and fear around us, and also within us.
How can Dharma teachings and practices support us?
How can we deepen understanding and compassion in the midst of it all?
This talk offers reflections on possibilities that are available to us, including practices that we can engage with, lean into, and cultivate.
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SanghaSeva
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A Response to Coronavirus
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