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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2026-02-14
How Do I Apply the Dhamma to Disease and Death SN 3.22 Grandmother and 47.13 With Cunda l Ayya Santussikā
1:42:20
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Ayya Santussika
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From January 4th to April 2nd 2026 the regularly scheduled Saturday morning program taught by Ayya Santussikā, will take many of the suttas referenced in "Mindfully Facing Disease and Death" by Bhikkhu Anālayo as their basis.
For those who want to dive deeply into this material, you may want to read the book as we discuss the suttas, listed below.
Jan 10 SN 22.1 Nakula’s Father Chapter 2
Jan 17 SN 36.6 An Arrow Chapter 3
Jan 24 SN 22.88 With Assaji Chapter 10
Jan 31 SN 22.89 With Khemaka Chapter 11
Feb 7 AN 10.60 With Girimānanda Chapter 12
Feb 14 SN 3.22 Grandmother and SN 47.13 With Cunda Chapters 13 & 14
Feb 21 MN 143 Advice to Anāthapiṇḍika Chapter 16
Feb 28 SN 55.3 With Dīghāvu and SN 55.54 Sick Chapters 17 & 18
Mar 7 SN 36.7 The Infirmary (1st) Chapter 19
Mar 14 AN 6.56 With Phagguna Chapter 20
Mar 21 SN 35.74 Sick (1st) and SN 41.10 Seeing the Sick Chapters 21 & 22
Mar 28 DN 16.31, 34-36 The Buddha’s Last Words Chapter 23
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Karuna Buddhist Vihara
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2026-02-12
Practicing SHINE
51:05
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Amma Thanasanti
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Amma Thanasanti began meditating in 1979 under the guidance of Jack Engler, Ajahn Chah, and Dipa Ma. She spent 28 years as a Buddhist nun, including 20 years in Ajahn Chah monasteries, and has taught internationally since 1996.
She is the founder of Awakening Truth (awakeningtruth.org) and developed the Integrated Meditation Program (IMP), an attachment-repair pathway for meditators. Her work integrates classical Buddhist training with contemporary psychology and trauma-informed practice, helping practitioners discern where meditation supports awakening—and where relational wounds and trauma require direct healing. This integration allows the stillness, clarity, and goodness from meditation to become more natural and sustainable.
SHINE is a practice Amma developed as a counterpart to the RAIN method by Michelle McDonald and Tara Brach. While RAIN helps us meet difficulty, SHINE supports cultivating positive states—training the nervous system to recognize, sustain, and deepen what's good.The acronym stands for Sense, Hold, Inquire, Nourish, and Enhance. Integrated into the broader Integrated Meditation Program (IMP), SHINE addresses a gap many practitioners experience: we become skilled at observing suffering but less adept at stabilizing ease, joy, and goodness when they arise.
In this session, we'll practice SHINE together and explore how cultivating these states helps stillness, clarity, and goodness become more natural and sustainable in daily life.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2026-02-09
talk: ?Joy?
36:10
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Jill Shepherd
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Joy is an important aspect of the Buddha’s path to freedom, appearing as both an awakening factor and one of the four heart qualities known as the brahmavihāra. However, for many people it can feel elusive - or even irrelevant – in the midst of so much global, societal and individual suffering.
For this reason, the word Joy in the title of this talk is accompanied by question marks, as an invitation for us to explore together some common questions and/or doubts that often come up in relation to joy in the context of insight practice.
Together we’ll discover some of the ways that cultivating joy can help nourish the heart and deepen wisdom, even amid the challenging everyday realities that most of us face.
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London Insight Meditation
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2026-02-07
How Do I Apply Dhamma to Disease and Death AN 10.60 With Girimānanda | Ayya Santussikā
1:33:28
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Ayya Santussika
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This dhamma talk, guided meditation, comments, questions and responses was offered on February 7th, 2026 for “How do I apply the Dhamma to THIS!?!”
00:00 - GUIDED MEDITATION
27:34 - DHAMMA TALK
1:15:56 - COMMENTS, QUESTIONS & RESPONSES
From January 4th to April 2nd 2026 the regularly scheduled Saturday morning program taught by Ayya Santussika, will take many of the suttas referenced in "Mindfully Facing Disease and Death" by Bhikkhu Anālayo as their basis.
For those who want to dive deeply into this material, you may want to read the book as we discuss the suttas, listed below.
Jan 10 SN 22.1 Nakula’s Father Chapter 2
Jan 17 SN 36.6 An Arrow Chapter 3
Jan 24 SN 22.88 With Assaji Chapter 10
Jan 31 SN 22.89 With Khemaka Chapter 11
Feb 7 AN 10.60 With Girimānanda Chapter 12
Feb 14 SN 3.22 Grandmother and SN 47.13 With Cunda Chapters 13 & 14
Feb 21 MN 143 Advice to Anāthapiṇḍika Chapter 16
Feb 28 SN 55.3 With Dīghāvu and SN 55.54 Sick Chapters 17 & 18
Mar 7 SN 36.7 The Infirmary (1st) Chapter 19
Mar 14 AN 6.56 With Phagguna Chapter 20
Mar 21 SN 35.74 Sick (1st) and SN 41.10 Seeing the Sick Chapters 21 & 22
Mar 28 DN 16.31, 34-36 The Buddha’s Last Words Chapter 23
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Karuna Buddhist Vihara
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2026-02-04
The Importance of Investigation
59:56
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Walt Opie
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One of the seven factors of awakening is investigation-of-dhammas (or phenomena), which includes an attitude of patient curiosity or keen interest. This important factor works together with strong mindfulness to help us discriminate between the wholesome and unwholesome mind states present at any given moment. The Buddha described this as one of the key qualities that led to his awakening. This talk will explore how we can better understand this factor and begin implementing it more in our practice.
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Cambridge Insight Meditation Center
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2026-02-04
Responding to Our Times on the Basis of Our Practice 2: The Bodhisattva
58:28
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Donald Rothberg
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We first hear from a member of the community about how he is experiencing and responding to what's happening in the larger society and world in our times. We then fairly briefly review last week's session, first identifying the three traditional areas of training--in wisdom, meditation, and ethics--and how each can be important resources for responding to what's happening in our own experience and in our society and world. We focus especially on reviewing our exploration of "ethical practice," responding in our everyday lives and in the larger society and world in caring and compassionate ways.
We then explore the traditional figure of the bodhisattva as one who brings together deep commitments both to awakening and to helping others--helping others both in awakening and in terms of their life needs. We look at examples of bodhisattva vows from Theravada, Japanese Zen, and Vietnamese traditions, as well as from passages from Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life." We show images of archetypal bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteshvara, Tara, Kwan Yin, and Manjushri and discuss the ten ways of training of the Mahayana bodhisattva. We suggest a number of contemporary exemplars of the bodhisattva vocation, and invite participants to develop their own personalized bodhisattva vows. 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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2026-02-02
Q&A
40:50
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Q1 [from an online participant] I bumped into some Jehovah's witnesses on a walk sometime and they asked me what do Buddhists believe. How would you answer this question? Q2 09:15 When I'm doing Qigong I feel a lot of heaviness in my feet and after a while pain. Is this normal? Q3 11:07 I enjoy solitude to limit sensory input and unnecessary chatter. Is there such a thing as too much solitude? Q4 29:47 can I please ask about how you start an end your days? Do you have intentions you set? Any specific recollections or practices? Do you practice mindfulness of sleep and dreams?
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Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat
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Holding the ‘me-bag’ with kindness
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2026-01-30
Q&A
59:32
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Q1 How do we release trauma, painful memories? Q2 22:27 During meditation how do you know when to deflect pain, when to change posture? Q3 27:04 How do you maintain unconditioned love while holding boundaries? Q4 34:12 How do we manage or minimize sexual energy? Q5 41:31 What skilful techniques can illuminate the process of nama?
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Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat
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Holding the ‘me-bag’ with kindness
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2026-01-29
The Buddha on Views + Sangha Q&A
48:57
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James Baraz
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This talk discusses the Buddha's words on holding to fixed views from The Paramatthaka Sutta (Sn 4.5) followed by an open Q&A.
While the Buddha warned against attachment to views, some views are clearly aligned with the Dharma such as: causing harm will lead to suffering for oneself or another. How can we reconcile not holding to fixed views when you're clear that it is appropriate to take a strong stand against harm?
After reflections on this topic there is a Q&A session on this theme and other practice questions are explored.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2026-01-28
Impermanence as a Possibility for Liberation
49:37
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Andrea Castillo
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If things didn’t change, there would be no hope to become free. Those not trained in perceiving impermanence embrace it only as long as the change is pleasant. However, those trained in the Dharma experience the flow of change with equanimity. We recognize that it is the changes that cause us suffering that spark the most spiritual urgency for cultivating clear seeing, wisdom, and freedom. In this talk we will explore a discourse from the Buddha in which we are instructed how we can train in the perception of impermanence. Recognizing and understanding impermanence (anicca) brings the greatest happiness, which is peace.
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Cambridge Insight Meditation Center
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2026-01-28
Responding to Our Times on the Basis of Our Practice 1: Developing Caring and Compassionate Responses
62:58
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Donald Rothberg
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We begin by hearing from two members of the community about how they are experiencing and responding to what's happening in the larger society and world in our times. Donald then discusses how we might respond on the basis of our practice, identifying the three areas of training--in wisdom, meditation, and ethics. Guided by wisdom teachings, we can see the society and world as both manifesting greed, hatred, and delusion, and also awakened qualities. In our meditation, we can practice on many levels, including working with challenging emotions, seeing through social conditioning, and bringing mindfulness to our thoughts, emotions, and bodies.
We focus especially on "ethical practice," re-framed as developing caring and compassionate responses. We briefly outline the five ethical precepts, and then focus especially on the guideline of non-harming, clarifying how this is understood both more individually and socially, identifying teachings from the Buddha, King Ashoka, and Thich Nhat Hanh. We ask what our practice of developing "caring and compassionate" responses might look like, bringing in also material from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., including his nonviolence and understanding of interdependence, and Elie Wiesel, including his commitment always to speak up whenever there is suffering.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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