Vesak is the Buddhist holiday that celebrates the Buddha's birth, enlightment and death. What links these events is the radical and powerful message of all Buddhist teachings: We each have the potential to realize and live from and awakened heart and mind. This talk explores how the key mythological, psychological and spiritual junctures of the Buddha's life are entirely relevant to our own transformation.

Developing awakened wisdom is an organic process, the unbinding of all problems that leads to indestructible peace and harmlessness. We undertake and persevere through training the mind so that we can renounce our attachments and stop the interior whirling of the world. No longer caught in its duality, we rest in knowing the liberating truth of this moment, cessation of suffering and a transcendent healing that takes us to the Deathless.

Please note that these talks are from a 4 week retreat for experienced meditators. The talks and meditations can be listened to in any order or individually, but as they progressively unfold different levels of understanding of Emptiness, they will probably be more fully understood and the practices more easily developed if taken in series

The Shurangama Sutra, Matangi’s daughter & Ananda’s enlightement Sky Like Mind Those who delight in mental proliferation (papanca) never know Nibbana The end of birth and death Apartheid of the mind Nisagardatta’s method What Remains - What doesn’t move

Direct knowing of emptiness Between existence and nihilism Emptiness isn’t empty, wonderful existence doesn’t exist Grasping & papanca is the root of birth and death Surface & depth of ocean is all water Change of lineage from reliance on papanca to pure knowing Angulimala and original hua t’ou – STOP

The Dharma door of Chan / Zen The King of Samadhi’s – the Shurangama – Durable – Samadhi The context of the Shurangama Sutra – Ananda, Matangi’s daughter, Manjushri, the Buddha & Avalokitesvara Kuan Yin’s favoured meathod – ‘returning the hearing’ The pure, bright and primordial essence of consciousness Anuruddha seeks out advice from Sariputta – ‘Turn your mind to the Deathless’

Avalokitesvara – the Lord of Ease Ekayana – All streams lead to the ocean - all Dharma doors lead to the One Heart All Dharma doors are connected to Mindfulness Crossing over beings of the self nature – being kind is being Kuan Yin All Beings have been our mother, father, relative and are potential Buddha’s Kittisaro’s mother’s death and his tribute to her

Waking up to aging, illness and death. Turning into emotional pain. How to grow a meditation practice that holds it all.

The 4 truths that en-noble as we grow through them The 8 kinds of Dukkha – Anando, ex marine & monk, bowing through anger Death is also impermanent, seeing through impermanence, one touches peace. When the causes of dukkha break up, it ceases - revealing the timeless dharma.

Through referencing the parable of the cook (S.47:8), we are encouraged to get to know the mind in order to choose the meditation theme that suits it best. There are a range of themes you can use to counteract hindrances: such as death contemplation, unattractiveness of the body, lovingkindness, Buddha and breathing. Through trial and error, find out what is needed.

Further elaboration on the 32 parts of the body. The Buddh's story and 4 Noble Truths and the worm song of death

An exploration of papanca (conceptual poliferation) and nipapanca - the root of birth and death.

This is the seventh of a series of seven talks from the Study Retreat that interweaves reflections on Siddhattha Gotama's life, with critical interpretations of his teachings as recorded in the Pali Canon. In this seventh talk we conclude with his last years and death.

Using Awareness to question and challenge the identification with the five khandas. Working with death.

Awareness and Belief systems. Personality view as a limitation, a fetter.

In the Buddhist tradition, the spring celebration of Vesak honors the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death. The archetypal theme that plays through these three events, and the core teaching of the Buddha, is that we each have the capacity to realize profound inner freedom, happiness and peace. We are no different than the Buddha, and our path is to realize the luminosity of our spirit.

Using the experience of her mother’s recent death, Trudy talks about ways to practice with emotional reactivity and pure strong emotion.

Primary awareness is not fully liberated but can be released through relinquishing the will to be. This is explained from different perspectives

The five indriya: faith, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment merge in the Deathless where they correctly balance each other.

The sacred as the “deathless”: the path as how we enter it. The vision of mutuality which includes morality and compassion.

This is the second of two talks outlining key developments in the evolution of Buddhist schools in India between the death of the Buddha and the emergence of Dzogchen. This talk covers briefly the origins of the Mahayana, Naganjuna, Yogacara and Vajrayana.

This is the first of two talks outlining key developments in the evolution of Buddhist schools in India between the death of the Buddha (463 BCE) and the emergence of Dzogchen (ca. 6th cent.). This talk covers the stages of classical (or Nikaya) Buddhism up to the beginning of the Mahayana.

A free and honest life includes the very real awareness of death. If we can find the courage to deliberately contemplate death, to keep it in mind, this can open our life in a profound way to a nobility, urgency, purposefulness and beauty. The heart grows in compassion and moves toward the Deathless.

Our life is precious, holding within it the possibility on nurturing liberating wisdom. Reflections on death and impermanence bring a sense of urgency to our path

We are all vulnerable to aging, illness, and death. Everything born will eventually die. How can we contemplate death in a way that brings us to realize the deathless liberation of mind? How can we go beyond birth and death by facing the reality of our existence? Reflecting on death is one traditional way to contemplate the nature of the body. These meditations include contemplating the decaying corpse, body contemplations, noticing that our friends and loved ones perish. We are all friends who share birth, old age, sickness, and death.

The talk explores the story of Prince Siddartha's encounters with the Four Heavenly Messengers - old age, sickness, death and those who have 'gone forth' in search of the highest happiness. Woven with personal stories and the examples of contemporary masters, the talk also offers practical advice on how to use the experience of the Four Messengers as our teachers and inspiration in practice.

Death, Impermanence, Death Poems, Autumn Melancholy

By seeing ourselves as separate, we turn death into an abomination. Practice allows us to turn this around.

Impermanence – change in our lives, nature and death

Dharma Talk

The cycles of birth and death in physical life and moment to moment practicing dying during our life as a way to freedom

What activates the desires and fears we have when we come into contact with another? Meditation is about seeing things as they actually are, the operation of the heartmind intra and interpersonally. The mind will then incline towards what is wise. The heart is moved by contact with another. However there is pressure/tendencies of the mind to move into agitation and confusion on contact with others. What activates the fears and desires of interpersonal interaction? Hunger (tanha) pressurises thoughts and feelings so that the mind doesn't settle. It is like fuel or an electric current for the system (personality) that is in place. All thoughts/actions/speech are conditioned by past habits and occurrences (sankhara conditions namarupa). Hunger/craving fuels/energises the system to generate more constructs along the same lines as previous ones. (These can be wise or unwise habits) There are three hungers: 1) Hunger for sense desires which includes social desires as well e.g. avoidance of loneliness which is like a death of the self. it might be seeking pleasure from others, seeking approval from parents, or in a Buddhist rebirth sense of driving from life to life. 2) Hunger to be seen, to become. 3) Hunger not to be seen e.g. interacting whilst performing a role, wearing a mask so the 'real you' is hidden, limiting contact with people, or having contact defined procedurally so it is blinkered - again a form of 'hiding'.

When you move towards what is fearful step by step with courage, it is possible to overcome the darkest moments breath by breath.  Draw together all the threads of your life, and let each one go strand by strand. A guided meditation on death at a 10 day retreat, Galilee Centre, Arnprior, Ontario Canada.

This talk was given on the theme of compassion in honor of Veterans' Day. Compassion is the natural relationship of the heart to sorrow -- the movement of the heart in sympathy with other beings and with one's self. Relating to life with compassion allows us to move through this world of birth and death, of joy and sorrow with wisdom and grace.

This talk recaps some key elements in the development of Buddhism in India from the death of the Buddha through the splits that occurred in the early schools of what could be called classical or Nikaya Buddhism. It highlights some of the philosophical issues that caused the divisions.

Final talk in the series of eight.

Seventh in the series of eight talks.