Dharma Seed - Rodney Smith's Dharma Talks

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In Memoriam: Rick Woudenberg

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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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2005-01-01 Utterly Ordinary 46:33	Download Listen
We believe the ordinary is boring, mundane, uninteresting, but until we embrace it in ourselves we will forever seek to escape the very freedom that ordinariness contains.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : New Year's Retreat

2004-12-07 Self-Knowledge 64:57	Download Listen
Is your meditation directed toward learning about who you are? What areas do you shy away from paying attention to yourself? Where are you self-protected? Do you feel the pain associated with those areas? Become increasingly aware of one of those areas and see what difference bare attention (caring attention) makes to that pain. Offer that area metta to ease the pain of looking. The pain will ease in direct proportion to your understanding of it, and understanding is achieved through direct observation.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society

2004-11-23 Wholeness and Healing through Generosity 62:13	Download Listen
Notice how frequently you second-guess your generosity. You may have the desire to be generous but you let it pass without acting. This week act upon any impulse to be generous: if you have the thought to give something to someone, do not delay or second-guess the impulse. Give. Each time you open the Internet this week begin by going to thehungersite.com and offer a free donation to all the similar sites listed on that web page. Say metta phrases to each disadvantaged group as you make the offering. May all being have sufficient food; may all beings be free of breast cancer.... Feel the pain associated with each category of people and wish them well. Explore the relationship between feeling pain for another and generosity. Does the pain motivate you to move towards or away from giving? Notice your meditative posture and see if the chest and shoulders are fully open when you sit. How does your posture affect your mind? As you move through the day notice your posture when you feel selfish or irritable. Notice it when you feel generous and confident. When you feel selfish and closed down to generosity adjust your posture to a more open stance and see if that has any effect on your state of mind.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society

2004-07-23 The Story And The Story Teller 41:56	Download Listen
The story and the storyteller are mutually dependent and arise together.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge : July 2004 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2004-07-21 The Doubting Mind 42:54	Download Listen
Doubting is a frequent component of the western mind. We must explore it thoroughly.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge : July 2004 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2004-07-19 Distorting The Mind 46:36	Download Listen
We actually distort reality and live by the twisted logic of that mental truth.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge : July 2004 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2004-05-28 The Non-Doing Of Practice 46:39	Download Listen
The practice takes us through the doing mind into the non-doing of ease and contentment.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge : May 2004 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2004-05-26 The Path Of Not Knowing 46:46	Download Listen
The practice is simply to step out of self-deception. To do that one must be willing to surrender to the unknown.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge : May 2004 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2004-05-23 Caring Attention 52:10	Download Listen
The means of our practice must be aligned with the ends we seek.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge : May 2004 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2004-01-06 Precepts and Refuges 42:48	Download Listen
Seattle Insight Meditation Society

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