Guidance on mindfulness of intention

Step-by-step, through the simple practice of mindfulness, the heart learns to let go.

We first review four foundations of wise speech: (1) developing presence in the midst of communication; (2) working with the four guidelines for skillful speech developed by the Buddha; (3) bringing our mindfulness and skillful responses to our thoughts, emotions, and body states into our speech practice; and (4) empathy practice, tuning into others' and our own emotions and sense of "what matters." We then explore the importance of being with challenges and difficulties in our practice generally, and do two exercises exploring a difficult or challenging interaction with another, including working with an "empathy map." Discussion follows. (Materials on emotions [or feelings], needs, and an "empathy map" are given below, under "documents.")

Retreat is a renunciant experience recommended by the Buddha. Through this we can clarify and collect our centre.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This guided meditation begins with a four-minute introduction. 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. No registration necessary.

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. No registration necessary.

When we're not mindful of them, thoughts have so much power over our lives. These instructions are intended to help lead the way to freedom from these fleeting mental phenomena.

The family retreat 2023 at Spirit Rock focused on the Eightfold Path. This talk was on Samadhi-- or Wise Cultivation through Mindfulness and Meditation and was specifically geared to parents. How can parents practice mindfulness right in the heat of in daily life? Can we practice when we’re getting kids ready for school or putting them to bed, or fighting with our teen or when we're worried about them? Mindfulness can offer incredible tools to support parents in staying present, connected, awake, and in right relationship with our children, partners, and self.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

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.

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.

After an introduction of the teacher, there is a 30-minute guided meditation. We set the intention to track for moments of reactivity, and then have the first 10 minutes or so for settling. Then there are several lightly guided suggestions of ways to practice with reactivity, including noticing moderate or a little greater experiences of pleasant or unpleasant, and seeing whether we move to wanting and grasping, on the one hand, or not wanting or pushing away, on the other. At the end, there is guided practice on bringing up an experience of reactivity and exploring it especially with mindfulness and the wisdom of appropriate response. The meditation is followed by a dana talk.

Focus: Mindfulness & Wise Effort

A guided practice to center, calm and collect the mind by abiding with clear comprehension and mindfulness, without desire and grief for the world.

Critical text analysis of how Anapanasati practice fulfills the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Discussion of the samadhi (step 11) and liberating the mind (step 12) from hindrances and self.

We first focus on the importance of the practice of wise speech and then review three foundations of such practice: (1) developing presence in the midst of communication; (2) working with the four guidelines for skillful speech developed by the Buddha; and (3) integrating our practice to be mindful and skillful with thoughts, emotions, and body states with our speech practice. We then introduce a fourth foundation, empathy practice, aiming to understand and connect with another, exploring the roots of such practice in the innate capacity of empathy. We then identify a simple yet basic practice of tuning into someone's emotions and "needs" (or what matters to someone), based on the work of Nonviolent Communication (developed first by Marshall Rosenberg). A discussion follows, particularly examining bringing these practices into challenging interactions. (Materials on emotions--or feelings, needs, and an "empathy map" are given below, under "documents.")

Questions are précised: 00:00 Q1 What do you mean by “re-wilding your mind”? 19:59 Q2 What’s the relation between pitti, sukka and chi. 25:05 Q3 Which comes first after sense contact, sannya (impression/ perception) or vedena (the feeling)? 28:00 Q4 Does the third sattipatana (the establishments of mindfulness) only include citta of mano / manus? 34:21 (LB) Q5 How to contemplate the “gunky” parts of the body – the organs that get diseased etc. 41:35 Q6 I have a sense of the experience of annica like a connection to dynamism. Impermanence has a very time bound quality to it. 42:31 Q7 How can one develop one’s yoniso manisakara to keep attention turned inwards?

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

We examine first the Buddha’s teachings about awakening, We see how he understands the process as involving two processes. We are mindful of and work through what gets in the way of touching our natural awakening—greed, hatred, and delusion (or the two forms of reactivity—grasping after the pleasant and pushing away the unpleasant, along with ignorance about the nature of impermanence, reactivity or Dukkha, and not-self). We also develop those qualities which both support and manifest awakening, qualities identified in the teaching of the Seven Factors of Awakening. We see further how the Buddha at times identified the nature of awakened awareness as “signless, boundless, all-luminous,” and trace similar accounts of awakened awareness in the Thai Forest tradition and Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā. Then we ask the question about whether these wonderful teachings and associated practices are sufficient for awakening in the contemporary world. We point to how such teachings and practices are crucial but also need to be complemented by and integrated with a contemporary map of awakening, identifying forms of contemporary conditioning (and greed, hatred, and delusion) that are not found in the traditional account. Broadly speaking, we can identify two inter-related core areas—a first identifying more “psychological” conditioning, and more “social” conditioning (for example, around gender, race, sexual orientation, age, etc.). The talk is followed by discussion.

Basic instructions in developing concentration and stability, on the one hand, and mindfulness, on the other, are given in the context of the teaching of the Seven Factors of Awakening; concentration and mindfulness are two of the seven factors. We also explore inquiry or investigation, a third factor, in the context of mindfulness.

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.

The support and functionality of Clarity and Mindfulness

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.

Introduction to Vedana – the feeling tones - and a guided meditation

We look first at the importance of wise speech, the way that it forms an integral part of the path of awakening, the way that it is often underdeveloped in Western Buddhist practice, for various reasons, and some of the challenges of speech. We then examine three aspects of wise speech practice: (1) developing presence in the midst of communication; (2) working with the four guidelines for skillful speech developed by the Buddha; and (3) integrating our practice to be mindful and skillful with thoughts, emotions, and body states with our speech practice. The talk is followed by discussion, focused especially on some challenging relational and speech situations.

Settling in and gathering the mind. Mindfulness of body and breathing.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

Being mindful in nature helps reveal how inter-dependent we are wit all life and provides conditions to see through the constructed, separate self.

Discussion of the sixteen steps; the letting go of each tetrad, and how each one achieves the Four Establishments of Mindfulness. Focus on the first tetrad about the body.

Benefits of developing understanding. Various qualities that charachterize wisdom and mindfulness in daily life.

Questions précised – 00:06 Q1 What’s the importance of the lotus posture for practice? As a beginner I can’t sit like that but also I don’t feel good using a chair 05:34 Q2 Is awakening possible for a lay practitioner of mindfulness meditation such as I practice, or is this just a lost cause? 19:57 Q3 I have been doing sitting meditation almost daily for almost 30 years. There are good days when my attention is stable and I feel unified. But more frequently my experience becomes stagnant and I don’t know where to turn my attention and I feel bored, inadequate. 27:47 Q4 It’s so limiting to identify with a self. Why, when we have perfection in us is it so difficulty to see the truth? 38:42 Q5 Sometimes I see light around people or objects and sometimes things seem transparent with light. Can you say something about this? 39:38 Q6 I’m concerned about my daughter with obsessive compulsive disorder. What can you recommend? 42:15 Q7 Is it possible to overdue investigation? Sometimes it feels that investigating frozen states seems more like prodding rather than compassion. 43:18 Q8 How can I feel connected to people who don’t share the same values and vision of life? I feel lonely and angry when I’m with them.

In this talk we explore the core tools that we can use when we are struggling with difficult emotions, whether on retreat or in daily life. These tools are Mindfulness (of course): we learn how to be present with our emotions, practice RAIN, and meet our difficult thoughts and emotions with a fearless heart. The second tool is Wisdom: how can we "enlist the wisdom mind" to help us when we are lost in a challenging emotion.The third is Love: how we bring self-compassion and kindness to ourselves and our difficulties when we most need it. Lastly, Awareness Itself: Recognize the part of us that is stable, free, and luminous even in the midst of difficult emotions. Includes real-life examples.

This talk investigates curiosity as an aspect of one common definition of mindfulness. Being curious can help us incline more towards receiving felt-sense experience and avoid getting caught in judgment.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

Foundational sitting and walking instructions

Anxiety is spiking around the world and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer look at how anxiety is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and addiction.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

Anxiety is spiking around the world and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer look at how anxiety is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and addiction. Together they explore the power of particular mindfulness-based strategies, including noting what is happening, recognizing our habit loops, arousing curiosity and cultivating self-care. They shine a light on the genesis of worrying, how it perpetuates anxiety and ways we can become disenchanted with the habit.

Brief instruction on Tetrad 3 and 4 of Anapanasati - Mindfulness of in and out breathing, followed by a guided meditation for the 16 instructions.

A short explanation and guided meditation for the first two tetrads of Mindfulness of In and Out Breathing.

After laying down the scriptural foundations for this talk, Sayadaw explains that mindfulness does not occur alone: it has companions, namely, ardent effort & clear comprehension, as well as concentration.