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Donald Rothberg's Dharma Talks
Donald Rothberg
Donald Rothberg, PhD, has practiced Insight Meditation since 1976, and has also received training in Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra practice and the Hakomi approach to body-based psychotherapy. Formerly on the faculties of the University of Kentucky, Kenyon College, and Saybrook Graduate School, he currently writes and teaches classes, groups and retreats on meditation, daily life practice, spirituality and psychology, and socially engaged Buddhism. An organizer, teacher, and former board member for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Donald has helped to guide three six-month to two-year training programs in socially engaged spirituality through Buddhist Peace Fellowship (the BASE Program), Saybrook (the Socially Engaged Spirituality Program), and Spirit Rock (the Path of Engagement Program). He is the author of The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World and the co-editor of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers.
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2025-07-07 Talk: Bringing Our Practice to the Current Difficult Times: An Eightfold Path 66:51
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.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks
2025-07-07 Guided Meditation on the Two Main Forms of Buddhist Practice, Developing Concentration and Insight (Directed by the Core Wisdom Teaching) 39:28
We begin with brief instructions for developing samadhi (“placing together” or “concentration”), followed by basic mindfulness instructions and then guidance for working with the feeling-tone of pleasant or unpleasant, when it appears in the moderate range. We are mindful of pleasant or unpleasant and look for grasping or pushing away in some form, guided by core wisdom teachings.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks
2008-05-26 Five Guidelines For Practicing With Conflict 46:46
We explore five aspects of bringing our practice to conflicts - inner, interpersonal, group, or social: 1. At the heart of such practice is transforming reactivity and responding skillfully. Also crucial are different ways of: 2. grounding and centering in the body, 3. resting in the heart, 4. maintaining a non-dual vision, and 5. continuing to be deeply engaged and acting without attachment to immediate outcomes, once we have acted responsively.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Path of Engagement
2013-04-20 Connecting Inner and Outer Responses to Climate Change 37:28
At this time of climate disruption, we need powerful responses--integrating more "inner" spiritual practices and principles, on the one hand, with skill in "outer" responses, on the other. This integration or marriage can happen in many ways as we participate in the "great turning"--whether our primary emphasis, to use Joanna Macy's analysis, is stopping further damage from occurring, transforming our institutions, or helping to shift consciousness. Without this integration, however, spiritual practice runs the risk of becoming a kind of middle-class escapism and activism runs the risk of being caught in self-righteousness, attachment to views, demonization of the "enemy," and burnout. We need a new integration! We look at several dharma principles that can be the basis for such an integration, consider briefly how Spirit Rock is responding (and might respond further) to climate issues, and especially look at the figure of the bodhisattva.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Responses to Climate Change: Awareness, Action and Celebration
In collection: Responses to Climate Change: Awareness, Action and Celebration
2025-07-02 Talk: The Big Picture 3: Introduction to Ethical Practice 63:19
After a brief review of the first two talks in this series, we explore the nature of ethical practice, one of the three core inter-related areas of training for the Buddha, along with training in meditation and in wisdom. We see how ethical practice has often been understood historically as having a social dimension, both in the teachings of the Buddha and later, as in the edicts of King Ashoka. We also explore some of the ways that ethical practice has been marginalized in Western Buddhist practice, with significant consequences. Then we look at the commonality of ethical guidelines in cross-religious context, with Donald telling some personal stories. Finally, we outline several ways to carry out ethical practice and then open up to discussion.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks
2025-07-02 Guided Meditation: Developing Concentration, Mindfulness, and Insight Practice Exploring Impermanence and Reactivity, with Reflection on Daily Life Practice at the End 39:10
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks
2025-06-25 The Big Picture 2: Nine Ways of Deepening Daily Life Practice 65:55
We continue our series of meditations and talks exploring the foundations of contemporary Buddhist practice. We begin by reviewing last week's talk on the basic model of Buddhist meditation, identifying three aspects of practice. These three are (1) developing samadhi or concentration; (2) cultivating three modes of liberating insight--into impermanence, dukkha or reactivity, and not-self; and (3) opening to awakened awareness. Then we focus on a crucial, central, and not always developed dimension of contemporary practice, especially for the vast majority of Western Buddhist practitioners who do not live in monastic contexts--bringing practice to everyday life. We identify nine ways of deepening daily life practice (see the attached document, #314). The talk is followed by discussion.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks
Attached Files:
  • Nine Ways of Deepening Daily Life Practice by Donald Rothberg (PDF)
2025-06-25 Guided Meditation: Developing Concentration, Mindfulness, and Insight into Impermanence and Reactivity 38:54
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks
2025-06-18 The Big Picture 1 64:23
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.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks
2025-06-18 Guided Meditation to Develop Samadhi (Concentration) and Insight 38:48
We begin with guidance to develop samadhi (concentration). About mid-way through, we move to mindfulness practice, cultivating insight, and then to two important areas of liberating insight--insight into impermanence and insight into reactivity (the most fundamental meaning of dukkha).
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks

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