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Dharma Talks
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2016-09-19
Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Sensuality - Week 1
1:26:32
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Mark Nunberg
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This first part of the course is emphasizing the actual experience of sense gratification. In other words, we are learning how to be interested, intimate and discerning as the sensitive heart connects with the reality of this world of sensuality. Are we willing to meet this sense world honestly, with real interest in order to better understand the experience of gratification?
Here are some reflections for week two in preparation for small group discussions:
What have you learned in specifically observing, being intimate with experiences of gratification of sense experience.
How have you experienced happiness in the past? How much of this happiness has been related to the gratification of desire?
Reflect on the experiences of gratification and disappointment. What is the ongoing effect of these past successes and failures on your life?
Honestly map out those places in your life where you see enchantment with sense experience. For example, desires that seem to promise real lasting happiness for oneself.
Below are Study Materials for Week 1 and Week 2:
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Sensuality
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Attached Files:
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Dhamma - A Gradual Training
by Access to Insight
(Link)
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Buddha's discourse (sutta MN 13) The Great Mass of Stress
(Google Doc)
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Buddhist Sexual Ethics by Winton Higgins with a Rejoinder by Ajahn Brahmavamso, Ajahn Nanadhammo,
(Google Doc)
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Worldly Happiness / Buddhist Happiness: What the Buddha really taught by Mu Soeng, Parabola
(Google Doc)
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Sallatha Sutta: The Arrow (The Dart), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
(Google Doc)
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2016-10-10
Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Sensuality - Week 4
56:14
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Mark Nunberg
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Please take this week to more clearly discern the gratification & allure of sense experience and the drawbacks & limitations of sense experience. Remember, the practice is to collect honest data. The purification of view that the mind has toward sensuality does happen because we want to shift our view, rather, it happens because the data that the mind collects through being mindful overwhelms older views/beliefs about sensuality and allows for a newer, more refined, wiser view to arise in its place. One theme you might use for your small group sharing is, what if any data has this mind or heart, collected in the recent past that demonstrates the limitations and drawbacks of sense experience?
Some Additional Readings for Week 4:
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Sensuality
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Attached Files:
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Placeholder
(File)
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Mind Like Fire Unbound Chapter III 'Forty cartloads of timber.'
by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
(Link)
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What You Take Home With You by Ajahn Sucitto
(Google Doc)
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2016-10-17
Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Sensuality - Week 5
1:28:22
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Mark Nunberg
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We have now completed half of our course examining our experience of sensuality. As we have begun to reflect on the limitation of sense experience we want to specifically look into the limitations of what we might consider wholesome experience. What danger, if any, is associated with wholesome experiences? At the end of MN 13, The Discourse on the Great Mass of Stress the Buddha uses the example of meditative peace as a sense experience with the allure of gratification, with drawbacks and with an escape. So if even the deepest states of meditative peace have drawbacks what about the pleasant wholesome states that our minds are still dependent on? Are these experiences a set up for disappointment, stress and suffering? What has our experience taught us? Let's notice the ephemeral quality of our wholesome moments. Are they stable enough to provide lasting satisfaction?
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Buddhist Studies Course - Understanding Sensuality
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