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Retreat Dharma Talks

Monday and Wednesday Talks

Regular weekly talks given at the lower Spirit Rock meditation hall

Spirit Rock Meditation Center

  
2025-05-19 An Appropriate Response: Teachings for Our Times 1:46:41
Devon Hase
2025-05-22 Awareness Doesn't Care: Mindfulness, the Equal Opportunity Liberator 45:25
James Baraz
We may think some experiences are better than others to support awakening, but the Buddha said otherwise. This talk explores the liberative quality of mindfulness and the implications of this understanding.
2025-05-26 Memorial Day Metta 34:29
Eugene Cash
2025-05-26 Memorial Day Metta - Dharma Talk 1:16:21
Eugene Cash
2025-06-09 Awakening from the Illusion of Separation 1:53:35
Amana Brembry Johnson
2025-06-18 Guided Meditation to Develop Samadhi (Concentration) and Insight 38:48
Donald Rothberg
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).
2025-06-18 The Big Picture 1 64:23
Donald Rothberg
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.
2025-06-25 Guided Meditation: Developing Concentration, Mindfulness, and Insight into Impermanence and Reactivity 38:54
Donald Rothberg
2025-06-25 The Big Picture 2: Nine Ways of Deepening Daily Life Practice 65:55
Donald Rothberg
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.
Attached Files:
  • Nine Ways of Deepening Daily Life Practice by Donald Rothberg (PDF)
2025-06-30 The Deep, Simple Gratitude for Knowing Awareness 1:47:23
Shinmu Tamori Gibson
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