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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2025-07-07
Talk: Bringing Our Practice to the Current Difficult Times: An Eightfold Path
66:51
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Donald Rothberg
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For the Buddha, practice was understood as involving three trainings, in wisdom, meditation, and ethics (sila). Ethics, typically under-emphasized in much of Western Buddhism, with sometimes clear negative consequences, had as its horizon helping others. The Buddha said: “Wander forth . . . for the welfare of the multitude, for the happiness of the multitude, out of compassion for the world.” The later emphasis on the bodhisattva develops this emphasis further.
In this talk, we suggest a contemporary “Eightfold Path” for understanding and responding to the current difficult times in the society and world. It’s outlined in terms of three wisdom guidelines, two meditation guidelines, and three ethics guidelines.
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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2025-06-18
The Big Picture 1
64:23
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Donald Rothberg
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The talk begins to give the "big picture" about the nature of our practice, and how we come, in a way suitable to our times and places, to manifest wisdom, love and compassion, and skillful responses in our lives, increasingly more of the time. We reflect first on some of the challenges of our times, and how Buddhism, as it has moved to different cultures, has always taken new forms.
A main part of the big picture, which is our main focus today, is a model of how meditation develops. We articulate a model involving three main forms of practice (that we can find in multiple Buddhist traditions): Developing samadhi (concentration), opening to liberating insight, and opening to awakened awareness. We explore each of the three and their relationship to each other. 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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2025-05-07
Guided Meditation: Exploring Emotions and Thoughts Connected to Contemporary Social and Political Events 2
40:16
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Donald Rothberg
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We begin with some guidance on developing samadhi (concentration) and stability, followed by practicing developing samadhi. After about 10 minutes developing samadhi, we move to mindfulness practice. After about another 10 minutes of practice, we then inquire into some of the emotions and thoughts that have been present recently, whether difficult or joyful, related to the current state of the society and world. We first relive a recent experience and then bring mindfulness to the somatic, emotional, and mental dimensions of experience. While staying silent, we also have a sense of being in community and sharing our experience. We then work with Kristen Neff's three-step self-compassion practice (shifting to a three-step joy or mudita practice if the experiences have been more positive).
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2025-05-06
Equanimity as Wise View
36:09
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome. No registration necessary. Led by Mark Nunberg and guest teachers.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-05-06
Equanimity as Wise View
52:18
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome. No registration necessary. Led by Mark Nunberg and guest teachers.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-04-06
Appreciative Joy - Meditation
30:54
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome. No registration necessary. Led by Mark Nunberg and guest teachers.
Mark Nunberg began his practice in 1982 and has been teaching meditation since 1990. He co-founded Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis in 1993 with Wynn Fricke and continues to serve as the center’s Guiding Teacher. Mark has studied with both Asian and Western teachers and finds deep inspiration in the teachings of the Buddha. Mark practiced as a monk for five months in Burma and completed four three-month retreats at Insight Meditation Society Retreat Center, as well as many months of intensive retreat practice at The Forest Refuge. Mark continues to be a grateful student of Buddhist practice.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-04-06
Appreciative Joy - Talk
36:42
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome. No registration necessary. Led by Mark Nunberg and guest teachers.
Mark Nunberg began his practice in 1982 and has been teaching meditation since 1990. He co-founded Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis in 1993 with Wynn Fricke and continues to serve as the center’s Guiding Teacher. Mark has studied with both Asian and Western teachers and finds deep inspiration in the teachings of the Buddha. Mark practiced as a monk for five months in Burma and completed four three-month retreats at Insight Meditation Society Retreat Center, as well as many months of intensive retreat practice at The Forest Refuge. Mark continues to be a grateful student of Buddhist practice.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-04-01
The Uplifting Attitude of Compassion - Meditation
31:36
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome. No registration necessary. Led by Mark Nunberg and guest teachers.
Mark Nunberg began his practice in 1982 and has been teaching meditation since 1990. He co-founded Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis in 1993 with Wynn Fricke and continues to serve as the center’s Guiding Teacher. Mark has studied with both Asian and Western teachers and finds deep inspiration in the teachings of the Buddha. Mark practiced as a monk for five months in Burma and completed four three-month retreats at Insight Meditation Society Retreat Center, as well as many months of intensive retreat practice at The Forest Refuge. Mark continues to be a grateful student of Buddhist practice.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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2025-04-01
The Uplifting Attitude of Compassion - Talk
44:32
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome. No registration necessary. Led by Mark Nunberg and guest teachers.
Mark Nunberg began his practice in 1982 and has been teaching meditation since 1990. He co-founded Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis in 1993 with Wynn Fricke and continues to serve as the center’s Guiding Teacher. Mark has studied with both Asian and Western teachers and finds deep inspiration in the teachings of the Buddha. Mark practiced as a monk for five months in Burma and completed four three-month retreats at Insight Meditation Society Retreat Center, as well as many months of intensive retreat practice at The Forest Refuge. Mark continues to be a grateful student of Buddhist practice.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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2025-03-17
Compassion Instruction and Guidance
51:33
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Tempel Smith
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We need to explore how to find and develop true compassion which is a beautiful quality of opening our hearts to the suffering inside and outside ourselves. While there is pain in suffering we can actually grow to have a sweet heart of compassion when we know how to breath open heartedly in contact with pain and suffering. When we find true compassion we don't need to shrink back from what is difficult but rather use the commonalities of difficulties to feel warm and expanded.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
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2025-03-11
The Peace Beyond
29:37
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-03-11
The Peace Beyond
41:30
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-02-09
Responding to Reality with Heart: Compassion and Equanimity
35:31
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Eugene Cash
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The world suffers. But most people have their eyes and ears closed. They do not see the unbroken stream of tears flowing through life; they do not hear the cry of distress continually pervading the world. Bound by selfishness, their hearts turn stiff and narrow... It is compassion that removes the heavy bar, opens the door to freedom and makes the narrow heart as wide as the world.
~Nyanaponika Thera
To support San Francisco Insight Meditation Community, please go here: sfinsight.org/donate
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San Francisco Insight Meditation Community
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2025-02-08
Sīla as a Path of Meaningful Connection
30:37
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Devon Hase
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This talk explores sīla (moral conduct) as both foundation and ongoing practice in Buddhism. Devon emphasizes the paradox of sīla—it's both a starting point and something continuously cultivated in each moment. She discusses how integrity requires balancing self-compassion with engagement in the world, using the metaphor of mountain wildflowers that are both tender and strong. The talk highlights how sīla provides resilience during difficult times, allowing practitioners to remain connected to goodness while confronting suffering without bypassing or burning out.
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Refuge of Belonging
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2025-02-06
Right Intention
59:12
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Yuka Nakamura
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Our actions are often driven by unconscious or conflicting intentions. How can we align with wholesome intentions and cultivate wholesome mindstates? Based on the Dvedhāvitakkasutta the talk discusses the importance of renunciation, metta and compassion for the path and the transformation of the heart.
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Meditationszentrum Beatenberg
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2025-01-30
The Antidote to Fear: Practicing in Uncertain Times
51:41
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James Baraz
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It seems like many are feeling either a low-level anxiety or fear these days. Fear about their safety, about disasters like fire or floods, about what the future holds. While this is natural and understandable, when our minds get hijacked by fearful thoughts, it is almost impossible to have a wise or appropriate response.
In this talk we explore practicing and skillfully working with fear so that it can transform into courage, compassion and wisdom.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2025-01-26
Liberation through Non-Clinging - Talk
39:56
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-01-26
Liberation through Non-Clinging - Meditation
27:48
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Mark Nunberg
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The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-01-15
Metta Practice and the Life and Work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
55:59
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Donald Rothberg
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On the birthday of Dr. King, we explore some of the remarkable and powerful parallels between Metta practice and Buddhist teachings, on the one hand, and the life, teachings, and work of Dr. King, on the other. We explore in particular three areas: (1) the connection between Metta and the Christian tradition of acting from love that is central for King; (2) the wisdom perspective of seeing greed, hatred, and delusion, and developing understanding and manifesting non-reactivity through ethical grounding and nonviolence; and (3) the other qualities of the awakened heart--the Brahmavihara for the Buddha, and Dr. King’s way of manifesting qualities in addition to love, such as compassion, empathy, joy, and equanimity.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Mettā Retreat: Teachings and Practices to Cultivate a Wise, Awakened, and Responsive Heart
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2025-01-04
From A Single Flame To Vast Light
33:37
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Guided by the Dhamma, our life path is courageous. See how the world burns from cruel and chaotic forces. So we cultivate a heart of compassionate awareness and peace, knowing that freedom from suffering is within reach. Our spiritual footprints emulate those of the Buddha himself. We persevere and endure, powered by the noble fire of the Dhamma to illuminate our way and to bless us and all generations to come. Small as the flame appears, its light is as vast as this universe.
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Portland Friends of the Dhamma
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2024-12-28
Passions of Buddha, Pt.3 : Letting Go Into Dispassion
1:33:43
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Nathan Glyde
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An Online Dharma Hall session includes a Guided Meditation, a Dharma Talk, and responses to unrecorded questions. A three-part series examining the role of passion, compassion, and dispassion on the Buddha's path to peace. This week, the disentangling release that comes from renunciation of paths that promise a happiness but don't deliver. What we can learn from compassionate engagement or the refined happiness of an unhindered heart-mind. And how they open the heart and mind to support us to let go of narrow (fiery, lustful) passions for a grander freedom (of meaningful purpose).
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Gaia House
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Online Dharma Hall - December 2024
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2024-12-21
Passions of Buddha, Pt.2 : Boundless Compassion
1:26:13
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Nathan Glyde
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An Online Dharma Hall session includes a Guided Meditation, a Dharma Talk, and responses to unrecorded questions. A three-part series examining the role of passion, compassion, and dispassion on the Buddha's path to peace. This week, the freedom pathway and fruit of compassion. Including the interplay between compassion, forgiveness, and healing of the heart; the well-being that comes from the cultivation of a boundless expansive heart—and how this way we can resource ourselves beyond habitual routes (that don't really work) towards satisfaction and well-being that (really does).
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Gaia House
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Online Dharma Hall - December 2024
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2024-11-27
Two Ways That Our Practice Can Help with Understanding, and Developing Empathy with, Those with Different Views, after the US Election
63:28
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Donald Rothberg
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It's important for our teachings and practices to help orient us in relationship to all parts of our lives, including the larger social and political dimensions of our lives. In this session, we explore one core teaching and one central practice that together help us to respond skillfully to differences in political views. The teaching is that of dependent origination, particularly the sequence from contact to grasping. We see how the two forms of reactivity, grasping and pushing away (each potentially manifesting in many ways) result from pleasant and unpleasant feeling-tones, when there is a lack of mindfulness and background habitual tendencies. We can see how the underlying pain, for example, of many working-class people (economic pain; and the pain of feeling disregarded, left behind, and/or not respected), or the pain related to anxiety about changing gender roles, can, especially when manipulated by those in power who provide scapegoats, lead to reactivity. After presenting a model of empathy practice as crucial for bringing our practice to interacting with those with different views, we can also, through such practice, tune in with compassion to the underlying pain, and have a sense of the deep genuine needs, in our examples, for economic well-being, respect, and clarity around gender. We explore all of this in an exercise with the "empathy map," which is followed by discussion. (There were several files shared via screen sharing during the talk. These files can be accessed below and potentially downloaded, by clicking on the "Q" under "Documents," and looking for documents 229, 273, 274, and 275.)
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-11-27
Guided Meditation on Feeling-Tone, the Second Foundation of Mindfulness
40:14
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Donald Rothberg
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After setting the posture and tuning into intentions, we have a short period of settling, typically through the breath or some other anchor. Then there is guidance to tune into the feeling-tone, especially when there is a "moderate" level pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tone, noticing tendencies to move to wanting/not-wanting or grasping/pushing away--the two forms of reactivity. We can also, when there is reactivity, tune into the pleasant or unpleasant "beneath" the reactivity, finding, for example, some compassion when there is underlying pain. Near the end, we also explore being with all feeling-tones for a very short period of a few minutes.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-11-11
Gathering Spiritual Resources in this moment.
43:58
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Kate Munding
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This is a time of gathering spiritual resources. To gather the wisdom and clarity that exists within. It's a time to tap into knowledge and strength that exists externally. Tonight will be an evening of self-compassion and an opening towards more clarity of how to meet this moment in time. Whether you are feeling energized to meet the greed, hate, and delusion that is so empowered right now, or you feel numb, tired, and defeated, this evening will guide you.
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Assaya Sangha
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2024-11-07
Keeping the Heart Open in Uncertain Times
52:18
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James Baraz
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This week has been a test for anyone who values kindness, compassion, and equanimity. It's understandable to get lost in fear, confusion and despair. This is when spiritual practice is needed most. How can we use our practice to develop a balance of mind in unpredictable circumstances, and relate to those who have very different perspectives from ours without getting caught in "othering"?
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2024-11-06
Becoming Bodhisattvas in a Troubled World
51:37
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Tara Brach
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Thich Nhat Hanh said “no mud, no lotus.” How might anger, hatred and delusion—the mud of these times– give rise to a growing compassion and wisdom in our world? In this talk, we look directly at the angst surrounding the US elections and explore several powerful teachings and practices that can serve as the catalyst for profound transformation and an evolving of wisdom and love in our collective consciousness.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-09-18
Waking up from Bias: A Conversation with Tara and Anurag (Anu) Gupta
55:15
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Tara Brach
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Given how our biases create separation and unfold into violence and suffering, this is a crucial domain for each of us to explore. In this interview, author and teacher Anurag Gupta offers his wise perspectives and invites Tara to share some of what she has learned in navigating this terrain. We explore how to come into a healing relationship with unhealthy thoughts; forgiving ourselves for bias (it’s impersonal); the inner freedom that arises from releasing bias; and how to awaken compassion and deep respect for those we have habitually dehumanized. The interview closes with Tara leading a brief reflection on undoing bias.
Anu’s recent book is: Breaking Bias – Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From – and the Science-backed Method to Unravel Them – 2024. Also available on Anu’s website at: https://www.bemorewithanu.com.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-09-11
What is Love Asking from Us? A Conversation between Tara Brach & Gabor Maté
61:04
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Tara Brach
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In this conversation, Tara Brach and Gabor Maté come together to explore the heart-wrenching situation in Gaza through the lens of the Bodhisattva path. Drawing from the Bodhisattva path – the commitment to alleviate suffering for all beings – they explore the importance of compassion and engaged spirituality in responding to the oppression and trauma experienced by the Palestinian and Israeli people.
This conversation is an invitation to examine our own spiritual practices and to consider how we can embody the Bodhisattva spirit in today’s world, breaking the silence and standing in solidarity with all who are suffering. It was offered as part of a series of conversations that accompany a poignant and heartbreaking film – “Where Olive Trees Weep” – about the struggles and resilience of Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. Access to the full program and the film is by donation – link here.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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