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Dharma Talks
2024-12-11
Understanding and Practicing with Anger
63:35
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Donald Rothberg
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We continue to explore the intersection of our more inner practice and our practice with the larger world, including the U.S. post-election world. Our starting point is seeing how widespread and predominant the emotions of anger and fear are in our society. We look particularly at the nature of anger and how to practice with it, especially in terms of our own anger but also in terms of the anger of others.
Anger, it has been said, is the most confusing emotion in Western civilization, seen often over the last 2500 years sometimes as both entirely as negative and sometimes as a quality that manifests, for example, in the Jewish prophets, Jesus, and God. There's a confusion also among Western Buddhists, who may have conditioning related to aversion to anger combined with following problematic translations of terms like dosa (entirely negative in the Buddhist context) as "anger" (not entirely negative in the contemporary Western context).
Based on these explorations of the nature of anger, we look at how to practice with anger individually, especially through mindful investigation of anger and how anger can lead either to reactivity and the formation of reactive views of self and/or other, or to skillful action. We also explore practicing with the anger of others through empathy practice.
The talk is followed by discussion and sharing, including of the experiences of practicing with anger from several people. The meditation before the talk includes a guided exploration of an experience of anger in the last third of the meditation period (the meditation is also on Dharma Seed).
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-12-08
Wisdom Power
27:01
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Treasure the silence within and listen attentively. Where else can we find the spiritual heights but within our own heart? In one moment of pure presence, we discover the joy, patience, mindfulness and 'kindfulness' that open our eyes to the truth of what we are. And in the goodness of time, there’s an emptying out. It's almost by unlearning what we’ve learned that we can see the blank screen of nothingness in the mind and know pure consciousness itself. This transcendent awareness becomes our refuge. We no longer look for refuge in other people, nor in ideas, concepts, occupations, travels, wealth, information, anything of the world. The heart is overjoyed in simple homage to the breath we breathe right now. This is waking up through wisdom power – pure presence ever transcending.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-11-27
Two Ways That Our Practice Can Help with Understanding, and Developing Empathy with, Those with Different Views, after the US Election
63:28
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Donald Rothberg
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It's important for our teachings and practices to help orient us in relationship to all parts of our lives, including the larger social and political dimensions of our lives. In this session, we explore one core teaching and one central practice that together help us to respond skillfully to differences in political views. The teaching is that of dependent origination, particularly the sequence from contact to grasping. We see how the two forms of reactivity, grasping and pushing away (each potentially manifesting in many ways) result from pleasant and unpleasant feeling-tones, when there is a lack of mindfulness and background habitual tendencies. We can see how the underlying pain, for example, of many working-class people (economic pain; and the pain of feeling disregarded, left behind, and/or not respected), or the pain related to anxiety about changing gender roles, can, especially when manipulated by those in power who provide scapegoats, lead to reactivity. After presenting a model of empathy practice as crucial for bringing our practice to interacting with those with different views, we can also, through such practice, tune in with compassion to the underlying pain, and have a sense of the deep genuine needs, in our examples, for economic well-being, respect, and clarity around gender. We explore all of this in an exercise with the "empathy map," which is followed by discussion. (There were several files shared via screen sharing during the talk. These files can be accessed below and potentially downloaded, by clicking on the "Q" under "Documents," and looking for documents 229, 273, 274, and 275.)
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-11-27
Guided Meditation on Feeling-Tone, the Second Foundation of Mindfulness
40:14
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Donald Rothberg
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After setting the posture and tuning into intentions, we have a short period of settling, typically through the breath or some other anchor. Then there is guidance to tune into the feeling-tone, especially when there is a "moderate" level pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tone, noticing tendencies to move to wanting/not-wanting or grasping/pushing away--the two forms of reactivity. We can also, when there is reactivity, tune into the pleasant or unpleasant "beneath" the reactivity, finding, for example, some compassion when there is underlying pain. Near the end, we also explore being with all feeling-tones for a very short period of a few minutes.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-11-20
Meditation: Vipassana – The Practice of Seeing Clearly
18:01
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Tara Brach
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Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment-to-moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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