When starting a long retreat, we should establish a proper attitude to our practice and also appreciate the purpose of renunciation.

Mindfulness is becoming more mainstream, but if we are to truly practice it, we need to understand what right mindfulness as a path factor is.

The tendency to compare ourselves to others or against some idealized standards is the cause of much suffering. This self-judgement is based on what the Buddha called "the conceit of I am". This talk explores how to work skillfully with the judging and comparing mind.

The faith we are asked to cultivate in our practice is the confidence to put wisdom of the Buddha into action in our lives. Doing this, we can see for ourselves the benefit of this wisdom. Yet the process is gradual and many of us have doubts. Recognizing and working with doubt is an essential aspect of our spiritual journey.

We can come to a greater freedom in life by investigating the nature strong emotions and our relation to them. This talk explores working with four emotions in particular: desire, sadness, anger and fear. Publishable online for the general public

Intention is the basis of all karma. It is also a key aspect of dharma practice, both in moment to moment experience as well as our aspiration, vision that fuels our practice.

The Buddha described five mental and physical process that encompasses all of our experience. He pointed us to recognize and understand them and how they serve us as magnets for clinging and suffering. This talk explores how we connect with these processes as a direct experience.

Impermanence and letting go.

Understanding the five aggregates can help us understand the absence of a self in sensory experience and also the insubstantiality of phenomena.

Practicing meditation, we inevitably encounter the wandering mind. Rather than considering this experience to be a "problem", if we explore this phenomenon with mindfulness, we can learn a lot about our minds.

Exploring how the wisdom of emptiness manifests as compassion and how both are developed in our practice.

The Buddha was called The Happy One. With the emphasis on suffering, its cause and it’s end, we can forget that this path is really a path of cultivating true happiness. In this talk we look at three principles of the teaching that can be the foundation for true well-being and how it can be cultivated both on and off the cushion.

The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths – the truths of suffering, the cause of suffering , the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering – not as a philosophy, but as practices that we can use here and now to understand why we suffer and how to find release. Using this template to gain insight into our lives can bring a radical shift to the way we relate to our experience.

The talk explores how the sense of self is created through the links in dependent origination. “Unentangled knowing” describes how a meditator can be in a state of full awareness of things coming and going at the sense doors without being caught in them.

We sometimes think that if we are experiencing aversion in our practice, that insight must be out of reach. Yet the Buddha teaches us that the path unfolds through understanding suffering. When we bring mindfulness to aversion itself, the understanding that develops can be very freeing.

This talk continues the exploration of how the practice cultivates happiness and joy. Five wholesome states that support true well-being are investigated including practices that help us access them.

The sense of self as personality view is a construct of mind that arises and poises like any other phenomena - and we can explore it with intent rather than fear it.

How this particular form of self identify view comes into being. How it can be worked with, and how it can be a vehicle for awakening.

The practice of lovingkindness makes the heart more sensitive to the joys and sorrows of life. It also reveals a deep sense of connection to all sentient existence that overcomes a painful sense of isolation.

We often hear about and experience the suffering caused by greed and aversion, yet delusion, the third of the kilesas, or torments of mind, is in some ways a more fundamental cause of suffering, because if we weren’t deluded, we wouldn’t believe that by grasping or pushing away we could avoid suffering. The challenge with delusion is its very definition is that we don’t it is operating. This talk examines the many ways that delusion manifests, so we can begin to bring more clarity and understanding to our experience.

The source of our awakening is right inside us. As we learn to listen deeply to the wisdom and purity of heart that is connected to the truth, we are following the Buddha’s instructions to “be a lamp unto yourself.” This talk includes the Buddha’s five methods for dealing with distracting thoughts and how to discern the voice of wisdom from the voices of confusion and fear.

The Buddha's teaching on dependant origination describes how our minds create stuggle and suffering in our lives. This talk explores some practical ways this teaching can help us to break this cycle.

Determination one of the ten paramis - is a wonderful support for our practice - learning to recognize this quality in our mind is the subject of this talk.

The Buddha's words on the role generosity plays on the path to awakening and how generosity can manifest in out daily lives.

This talk covers four key areas of the Buddha’s teachings on karma: action, results of action, relation to not-self, and the end of karma. Publishable online for the general public

Patience, one of the paramis, is a quality that we don’t often appreciate, even though it is tremendously important in our practice and our lives. To be patient is to be fully present for what is, to be with difficulty and challenge without resistance. Patience allows mindfulness and wisdom to deepen, as we meet our experience without agendas or expectations.

The Buddha often taught the Dhamma through the use of analogy, which can be a powerful way for the teachings to resonate. This talk explores two famous analogies from the Pali Canon, and how we can understand our practice thorugh the imagery of these analogies.

The experience of contentment is the true happiness available through letting go and seeing our experience complete just as it is. Nothing needs to be added or taken away. This talk explores inner contentment, the state of “abundant enoughness”, while distinguishing it from complacency, laziness or just being resigned to the way things are. We can be inspired by a vision of awakening, develop our gifts and make a contribution, while we appreciate things just as they are in the moment.

A brief telling of a few of the first Buddhist nuns, parried with stories of some contemporary Buddhist nuns.