Dharma Seed - Rodney Smith's Dharma Talks

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Rodney Smith's Dharma Talks

Rodney Smith

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More and more, the teaching practice takes me into the community where I engage directly with students. My focus right now is on bringing the continuity of the Dharma into the market place. Although retreating is an important form for self-knowledge, I find myself less interested in the immediate results of a retreat and more interested in helping students investigate their relationship to the ups and downs of their everyday life.

Nature, death and spontaneous freedom continually interweave themselves into my teaching. From the forest of Thailand, where I spent several years, I bring a deep awareness of the healing quality of nature into my teachings. Relaxing into our true nature allows us to realize what it means to be a human being. It is here we find a resting point, a counterbalance to the speed and turbulence of our culture.

My work in hospice brings a sense of urgency into my teaching. Working with the theme of death and dying reveals the here and now of life to us, how important it is to open to each loss, change and transition that marks our path. Life is precious. We need to awaken without hesitation.

Many of us crave to be more calm and centered. We know that life has more to offer than this fleeting material world. For each of us, the Dharma offers an immediacy of freedom for which we do not have to strive or wait. In practice, we can learn to relax deeply into the moment and rediscover spontaneous freedom.

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2012-04-03 Fundamentals of the Dharma: Staying Within Yourself 2:02	Download Listen
In the West we have little preparation for dharma practice because our lives have not been tuned to staying within ourselves. We have been taught to look outside for approval and to compare ourselves to others. How can we possibly find ourselves within any comparison? All we will ever find is a sense of lacking. Leaning toward the world does not allow us to find our own stability, and yet we cannot question the sense of self without inward evenness and dependability.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: Fundamentals of the Dharma

2012-04-17 Fundamentals of the Dharma: Sila 61:13	Download Listen
We usually approach ethical conduct (sila) from either righteousness (morality) or idealism (I must never harm any living thing!) but not often from stability and unification of heart. From the heart we just see what is appropriate to do and do it within the context of connection and nonharm. When we transgress we learn and move on and never expect anything miraculous or perfect in any way. We simply live within the fullness of our humanity, and that is enough.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: Fundamentals of the Dharma

2012-05-01 Fundamentals of the Dharma: Generosity 57:07	Download Listen
Why is generosity a fundamental dharma issue? The dharma opens us beyond our self-limitations, and generosity is the essential direction of that opening. There is a balance between staying within ourselves and our understanding without idealizing the dharma while working with our edges that keep us contained within ourselves. Generosity is the authentic journey out of that container where we realize we were never alone or isolated. Generosity is the manifestation in action of connectedness and is the fundamental conduit of a life lived from the heart.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: Fundamentals of the Dharma

2012-05-15 Fundamentals of the Dharma: Wise View 59:12	Download Listen
Wise view is fundamental to everything we do in the dharma. Having adirection establishes a context for all dharma activities. Without it weflounder and move in the direction of our conditioning toward pleasureand ease. Simply stated, wise view is the view that our thoughts distortour perceptions away from the inherent interconnection of all things.Working in clear alignment with interconnection allows us the courageand intention to move toward the difficult, toward that which seems toseparate, and confirm the truth of oneness. All dharma activity must bein accordance with that intention, or it will further support theconditioned sense of separation.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: Fundamentals of the Dharma

2012-05-29 Fundamentals of the Dharma: Wise Intention 58:43	Download Listen
Wise intention is the energy that moves all spiritual practices forward. We mistakenly think it is our willpower, but it is always and only our intention. There are two expressions of intention: the primary intention associated with the longing to be free and the secondary intention for gain and acquisition. The secondary is formed by the mind from the primary intention, and that is the reason we believe that satisfaction can come through desire. The mind tells us that. For the energy to be reinvested back into the primary we have to prove to ourselves that secondary gains will never be truly fulfilling. That is what is left for many of us to do.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: Fundamentals of the Dharma

2010-05-25 Satipatthana Sutta, First Foundation: Integrating Body and Actions 58:44	Download Listen
Once we have accepted the fact that we cannot control the dharma, our practice opens up to the full catastrophe of living. We open first by backing away from our egoic demands and then by infusing our actions with the wisdom of the body.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: The Satipatthana Sutta

2010-06-08 Satipatthana Sutta, First Foundation: Loving the Whole Body 58:27	Download Listen
We start with an aversive or attractive response to the body or body part, and quickly an emotional attitude arises that fixates upon the appearance; a story is formed, an opinion is held, and our body is made into something it never was. To love the whole of the body requires an intentional reversal of stepping out of those perceptual fixations and embracing the pleasant and unpleasant components in totality.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: The Satipatthana Sutta

2010-07-06 Satipatthana Sutta, First Foundation: Death and the Body (1) 59:24	Download Listen
The Buddha seems to be encouraging an exploration of the themes of death and the body in this passage of the Satipatthana Sutta. Though all of us know we are going to die, few of us realize that fact as a living truth. This passage is meant to release us from our denial that fixates on permanency and continuity.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: The Satipatthana Sutta

2010-08-03 Satipatthana Sutta, First Foundation: Death and the Body (2) 59:13	Download Listen
As we explore the body from this sutta, we realize the inevitability of loss and begin to see death everywhere. Death takes us through various stages of realization, altering our life and changing it forever. We learn to live consciously with all beginnings and endings.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: The Satipatthana Sutta

2010-08-24 Satipatthana Sutta, First Foundation: Mindfulness of the Mind Within the Body 53:13	Download Listen
How do the mind and body relate and does this tell us something regarding our identification with the processes involved? How does "mine and yours" become established within this relationship of mind/body?
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: The Satipatthana Sutta

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