An exploration of the nature of Mudita, how to cultivate and overcome obstacles to sympathetic joy.

In this special group mentorship program, IMS co-founder Joseph Goldstein offers support to meditators seeking to unlock the secrets of deep practice. The program offers a rare opportunity to ask questions that may be shared by others and to receive customized instruction while being in community and learning from each other.

By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.

At the core of our suffering is our universal human predicament: an illusion that we are a separate self. This talk explores how this identification as a self obscures our belonging to loving awareness, and offers a powerful set of practices that shine a light on self-centeredness and relaxes its grip.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

Guided practice taking our own suffering into compassionate awareness as a point of connection to the suffering of others.

Some words on compassion; with a focus on ease, trust, letting go, being gentle on yourself and seeing how seeing our own pain can connect us to the whole world.

An exploration of the power of metta to transform our hearts and our world.

If you have incessant or debilitating doubts here are a few strategies, including how to see/work with it as a part, and help update this part. Also includes a brief description about what Dipa Ma did for students.

As our meditation practice matures, we may begin to understand the importance of relinquishing grudges, judgments, and resentments through honest reconciliation that may lead to deep healing. We will focus and inquire on four inter-connected facets: 1) Making peace to the times we've been hard on oneselves 2) Making peace to the times you have hurt another 3) Making peace to those who’ve hurt you 4) Making peace with this life, with the way things are

It's important to have an orienting principle for Artificial Intelligence or AI. This talk will help you find an orienting principle, as well as give you tools and practices to use during times of great change.

00.36 Q1 I'm very new to meditation. Could you say more about sitting, about posture. 8.12 Q2 If I compare my practice to an elevator I seem to spend a lot of time at the top and would like to go deeper but I'm always going back up to the top again, up and down. 14.36 Q3 Having projects and things that I want to do that require determination, is that incompatible with a meditation practice? 18.35 Q4 My family have been football fans and have supported the Tottenham Hotspurs club for ages. What can you say about this? 21.32 Q5 What guidance can you give on engaging with conflict? 28.47 Q5 What can I do if the values of my friends and acquaintances don't fit with mine? 30.42 Q6 Regarding stream entry, do path and fruit happen simultaneously or does one come after the other?

This is the epitome of the Buddha's practice. As we practise abandoning our holding on to anything, we can learn how this 'need to hold' is a normal but subversive aspect of our experience.

Questions are précised and read into the file.This text is shortened further. 00.51 Q1 You said we create an imaginary world for our imaginary selves. Some people believe in the power of visualization where we can imagine a better world or a better self. 03.05 Q2 Please distinguish consciousness, the mind and the brain. 05.57 Q3 You use the word heart, but you don't use the word brain. 12.36 Q4 If there's no distinction between you and I, is there just a oneness? 13.00 Q5 Is the citta permanent? 14.13 Q6 A friend said her response to a car alarm was the same as her response to bird song. Where is the place for beauty in this? 15.29 Q7 In walking meditation, do we feel the movement and sense what your mind is doing with that experience? 21.28 Q8 Some thought patterns seem like some kind of karmic knot. They're not comfortable and yet I keep going into them. 25.08 Q9 What can I offer my dying friend to support balance for them? 32.20 Q10 Can thoughts just arise randomly? 37.02 Q11 If someone cheats us, do we just forgive them and move on? 41.18 Q12 I find that many of my interactions, conversations and what I do to work seem to be just abstractions and distractions. My desire to live more in dhamma makes me avoid people without this interest. 46.58 Q13 Do thoughts always arise from feelings? 50.03 Q14 What is time as an experience? 01.00.57 Q15 Where does collective consciousness fit into this? 01.03.09 Q16 How can we plan for the future and avoid the pitfalls of 'becoming'? 01.04.52 Q17 How to use Buddhist practice to deal with trauma and serious anxiety? 01.10.10 Q18 Is the teaching of no satisfaction /suffering more than 'there's no permanent satisfaction'? 01.13.34 Q19 It seems like the more I examine my own suffering, the more compassion I have for other people.

Finding balance means bringing our life-energies - thinking, emotions and embodied presence – into an even balance.

Mental balance is extremely precarious given the world of pushing and pulling that we live in. Finding and stabilizing presence in the eye of this hurricane can take time, but it's possible.

Reflecting on the retreat title - ‘A joyful liberation’ - Martin looks at nuances of joy, and at that which is liberating, pointing beyond our formal meditation practices, into the wider realms of an integrative dharma practice with its personal, social and ecological dimensions.

Ae discussion of the way, Metta supports insight practice and a guided Metta meditation to include the "neutral person"

In this special group mentorship program, IMS co-founder Joseph Goldstein offers support to meditators seeking to unlock the secrets of deep practice. The program offers a rare opportunity to ask questions that may be shared by others and to receive customized instruction while being in community and learning from each other.

This session is an invitation to come home to our body and mind so that we can meet the uncertainty of our times with courage and tenderness. With so many aspects of our lives impacted and disrupted by uncertainty and change, we will create space to care for our nervous systems, deepen connection to ourselves and others, and become intimate with the real unreliability of our circumstances and where we can nevertheless find true refuge. We will practice to hold ourselves and our communities with compassion and wisdom.

This meditation begins with gathering awareness of the breath. We then reflect on our deepest intention, sensing what most matters. With a listening attention, becoming aware of sounds that arise and pass away. We scan through the body, sensing the changing experience of energy and aliveness. Letting everything happen… not opposing anything… not controlling… moment to moment. Listening to and feeling this moment as an ever-changing river of experience. Opening to this changing flow and letting life flow through us.

In this rich and full two-part interview, Tara speaks with renowned poet Jane Hirshfield about the interface between poetry and meditation, the centrality of acceptance, and the pathways of remembrance that reveal our belonging to this world and open us to caring. Here’s a link to Jane’s most recent book: The Asking: New and Selected Poems. The interview includes readings from this beautiful collection.

Martin explores the essence refrain of the heart sutra, looking at emptiness in terms of gone-ness, spaciousness, and dissolution. He looks at what dissolves and what remains as our core structures dissolve, particularly in the areas of desire, belief, conformity and identity, or What I want, What I believe, How I behave and Who I take my myself to be.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene | Online Wednesday-Mornings

This talk begins with how Consciousness is fundamentally awake by nature. It explores ways this awake-ness gets obscured, ignored and suppressed, and goes on to looks at particular aspects of this awake nature and its functioning, such as consciousness, awareness, presence, and attention, then looks at the fruits of an awakened life.

Dhamma conversation with Alexis Santos about right attitude in the Sayadaw U Tejaniya tradition. Recorded at the Maine wilderness retreat.

Exploring our live reality of waking up to change & discovery

Part one of - three-month instructions, Day 5

Establishing, reflecting on and enjoying the fruits of cultivation is an ongoing heart process.

meditation instruction and guided meditation

Overview of how Mudita (Unselfish Joy/ Appreciative Joy) can be a wellspring for our practice, followed by a guided meditation that begins with gratitude and continues to offering joy to a dear one, self, and all beings.