|
Dharma Talks
2025-05-07
Guided Meditation: Exploring Emotions and Thoughts Connected to Contemporary Social and Political Events 2
40:16
|
Donald Rothberg
|
|
We begin with some guidance on developing samadhi (concentration) and stability, followed by practicing developing samadhi. After about 10 minutes developing samadhi, we move to mindfulness practice. After about another 10 minutes of practice, we then inquire into some of the emotions and thoughts that have been present recently, whether difficult or joyful, related to the current state of the society and world. We first relive a recent experience and then bring mindfulness to the somatic, emotional, and mental dimensions of experience. While staying silent, we also have a sense of being in community and sharing our experience. We then work with Kristen Neff's three-step self-compassion practice (shifting to a three-step joy or mudita practice if the experiences have been more positive).
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
Monday and Wednesday Talks
|
|
2025-04-12
Wisdom in Action: Mindfulness and Sampajanna on the Path to Liberation
32:47
|
Devon Hase
|
|
This dharma talk explores how mindfulness (sati) functions as a "charioteer" guiding spiritual faculties, with special focus on sampajanna (clear knowing) and its four aspects: intention, suitability, domain, and non-delusion. Through stories and examples, devon illustrates how developing these qualities leads to wisdom that responds appropriately in each moment, supporting liberation from suffering.
|
Refuge of Belonging
|
|
2025-04-02
Guided Meditation: Developing Samadhi (Concentration)
41:31
|
Donald Rothberg
|
|
We begin with a brief account of the nature of samadhi (usually translated as "concentration"), and then give instructions for developing samadhi in formal meditation. (We'll come back to discuss samadhi in more depth in the talk.) There are several reminders during the meditation to return to the focus on cultivating samadhi. In the last part of the meditation, we connect the greater stability that's developed in the practice of cultivating samadhi with cultivating mindfulness.
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
Monday and Wednesday Talks
|
|
2025-03-23
Light on effort, an oar in the stream
40:37
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
With effort, citta is the main thing. It’s both the heart quality from where intention streams and that which harvests the results. Then one knows where to best apply energy and how that’s done. Practise the application of effort to mindfulness of breathing, acknowledging and moderating the tools being used and the material they’re being applied to. When you practise rightly, there will be fortunate results.
|
Cittaviveka
:
End of 2025 CBM Winter Retreat
|
|
2025-03-15
The Process and Experience of "Streaming"
53:36
|
Tempel Smith
|
|
The Buddha wanted us to learn how to wakefully "stream", to realize we are forever and only a stream of mental and physical phenomena. We have no part internally or externally which is permanent, though in daily life we subjectively feel as if there is a lot of dependably permanent parts of life. With the deepening intimacy of mindfulness all there is is a flow and change. With patience we can learn to find liberation within the universal aspect of impermanence.
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
|
|
2025-03-13
Instructions and Guided Meditation: Choiceless Attention
59:12
|
Tempel Smith
|
|
There is a style of mindfulness practice where we lightly attending a central, familiar anchor of attention, such as the breath or scanning the body, and then intentionally choose to watch our minds move through its habits and its nature. In this style of mindfulness practice we can watch our attention move through our six sense doors of stimulation. With this style of meditation we can directly see the dharma nature of our mind.
With this style of practice we have to be careful we not lose attentiveness, which can be a shadow side of choiceless attention. We want to keep learning and discovering the dharma, and not space out into half committed mindfulness.
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
|
|
2025-03-11
The Peace Beyond
29:37
|
Mark Nunberg
|
|
The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.
|
Common Ground Meditation Center
:
Weekly Dharma Series
|
|
2025-03-11
The Peace Beyond
41:30
|
Mark Nunberg
|
|
The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.
|
Common Ground Meditation Center
:
Weekly Dharma Series
|
|
2025-02-23
As the Hollow Reed Becomes a Flute
28:31
|
Ayya Medhanandi
|
|
There is a transcendent Reality – inaccessible to the thought world – but to be known with right mindfulness and its accompanying powers of mind, patiently developed and polished day by day. These skills we learn provide tremendous traction to cultivate the mind, like gardeners watering the seeds of awakening. At the root of this uplifting spiritual training is the fundamental premise of our mortality. But are you ready to sit at the altar of the sublime and to have your illusions shattered? Like the hollow reed that becomes a flute, empty yourself of fear and be the pure love you seek.
|
Ottawa Buddhist Society
|
|
2025-02-12
Cultivating Wise Speech: Its Importance in the Path of Everyday Awakening
63:33
|
Donald Rothberg
|
|
Wise speech is an integral part of the traditional Buddhist path of awakening and a powerful way to energize our daily life practice, but is often underdeveloped in Western Buddhist practice. We’ll look in a very practical way at three aspects of wise speech: (1) developing presence in the midst of communication; (2) working with the four guidelines for skillful speech developed by the Buddha; and (3) becoming more mindful of and skillful with thoughts and emotions occurring during communication. For each of the foundations, a number of ways of practicing are offered. The talk is followed by discussion.
|
Insight San Diego
|
|
2025-02-08
Stay in your boat
31:11
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
Retreat is an occasion in which to repair, reset. In terms of life and meditation practice. In this process, mindfulness is accompanied by atapi - ardour, keeping things fresh - and various forms of clear comprehension (sampajano): to sense what is appropriate and fitting. Through referring to what arises in terms of objects one cultivates comprehension of purpose: to know objects as they are, and not self. This is comprehension in terms of non-delusion. There is also comprehension in terms of context (gocara), both internal and. external.
This cultivation brings stillness in the midst of conditions, and if we keep this going results build up. Through sustaining clear comprehension one realizes an openness that is stable, alert and all-encompassing
|
Cittaviveka
|
|
2025-02-05
Guided Meditation: Exploring Some Further Ways We Construct Experience
35:51
|
Donald Rothberg
|
|
We start with basic instructions in developing (1) concentration and stability, and (2) mindfulness, and then practice developing these two qualities. With mindfulness practice, we notice the main patterns of thoughts, emotions, and bodily experience. In the second half of the session, we work with being aware of the feeling-tone (linked with the Second Foundation of Mindfulness), noticing moderate (or somewhat greater) pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tones, and what occurs after we notice them. We also attend for a short period of two minutes to the moment-to-moment feeling tones of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and then go back to basic mindfulness practice for the last part of the session.
|
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
Monday and Wednesday Talks
|
|
|
|