Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia has been offering instruction in Theravada Buddhist teachings and practices since 1990. She is a student of the western forest sangha, the disciples of Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Chah, and is a Lay Buddhist Minister in association with Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in California. She served as resident teacher of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts from 1996 through 1999. Taraniya teaches at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and at Dhamma centers in the United States.
As meditators, we develop the capacity to relate anew to sensory input so that we are less and less preoccupied with the content of sensations, feelings and thoughts. From this new vantage point we are more able to see the clinging that leads to suffering.
Contemplating restlessness and worry -- what this mind state consists of and how to recognize it; name it; embrace it; and investigate it according to the Buddhist teachings.
Through meditation practice, we become more skilled at identifying what we
are experiencing, opening to it with a loving heart, and examining it with
an eye to insight. When we connect fully with what we feel, the heart is
not troubled and the nature of experience is apparent.
This talk examines situations that come up during integration week - the openness, the tending to hold on to retreat, the tendency to judge our practice.