Brief introduction followed by a guided metta meditation for group, self, and benefactors

This guided meditation helps us find ease and wakefulness in our body and mind. With the breath as our home base, we offer a gentle and full attention to the changing waves. We close with a beautiful poem, “Walk Slowly,” by Danna Faulds

We all need ways to guide our attention that allow us to find wisdom, love and freedom in the midst of our lives. This talk reviews three archetypal gateways—Buddha/awareness, Dharma/truth, and Sangha/loving community. Through teachings, guided meditations and a traditional refuge ritual, we engage together in bringing alive these pathways to healing and peace. (Note: Includes Refuges string tying ceremony and chanting the Refuges at end) St. Teresa of Avila says, “Only at the shrine where all are welcome will God sing loud enough to be heard.”

How to bring the mind to more balance and ease in the face of challenges.

Chant followed by guided meditation

Guided metta meditation

Guided Meditation New Year's Retreat

Offering care and kindness to our human bodies and the larger body of life.

Working with the middle aperture of attention, neither focused to one nor wide open. Mindful of the whole body and space around the body.

Our self-protective habits of resentment and blame block intimacy and connection with ourself and others. This short talk and meditation are an invitation to deepen our understanding of the suffering of blame, and to release the armoring to loving freely.

Guided Meditation New Year's Retreat

This guided session includes an overview of the primary components in meditation practices, and then guidance in awakening the senses, collecting the attention, and opening mindfully to changing experience.

A fifteen minute guided compassion meditation, offering compassion for all human beings and all other living beings affected by the current bushfire crisis in Australia

15-minute introduction with the four Brahma Viharas and Metta, then 30 minutes guided Metta for self and easy person.

Guided meditation with chanting

Guided meditations can help in terms of timing, to demonstrate just how slow a process meditation is. Generally, the object of meditation is simple, it’s the handling of it that’s the skill. Body sweeping develops receptivity of the body. One cultivates tonal qualities of receptivity and care.

Chant followed by guided meditation

Defination of Metta; practicing with receiving Metta from benefactors and offering it to self and all beings.

Guidance generally on mindfulness practice, followed by guidance on several ways to explore time, including being in the present moment, noticing patterns to time, and opening in different ways to the impermanence of experience.

This guided meditation touches into a fundamental quality that arose with the Buddha’s final realization – anukamapa, heartfelt sensitivity and sympathy for the welfare of sentient beings. We practice by generating perceptions and relating directly to the resulting experience.

Guided body meditation on the felt sense of presence.

In this guided meditation we begin with a body scan, and rest in awareness with our senses awake. The key practice is to recognize when the mind immerses in virtual reality, reawaken our senses, and surrender again and again into the immediacy, vibrance and mystery of living presence.

Chant followed by guided meditation

Exploration of the whole body via breath energy 'imagination' a la Ajahn Thanisarro

This guided meditation is an invitation to rest in Hereness—the immediacy and aliveness of full presence. We arrive and quiet with a conscious long deep breath, relax our bodies, awaken our senses, and then bring our attention to relaxing with our moment-to-moment experience. The poem ends with a beautiful poem called “Interlude” by poet Danna Faulds.

Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group, and a poem of blessing by John O’Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass – Om Namaha Shivaya.

Led by Mark Nunberg, Shelly Graf, Wynn Fricke, and Gabe Keller Flores The Buddha says that any position one takes including being attached to not having any fixed views is “a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. It is accompanied by suffering... and does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation; to calm, direct knowledge, full Awakening…” In this daylong workshop we will reflect together how necessary and unavoidable it is to use identity to illuminate the social dynamics of our lives, and at the same time how easy it is to become attached and confused by identity, taking it to be more than what it is. The same is true in terms of how the mind relates to any views. There is no way to function in the world without views about this and that. The relevant question is how one can use views without the suffering that comes with attachment. This recording contains the following parts - in order they are: 1 - Guided Meditation with emphasis on recognizing mind states and perceptions of oneself led by Shelly 2 - Introductions by teachers and participants: Name 1-5 identities that arise in our minds conscious or not, useful or not, led by Shelly 3 - Introduction to the workshop and the Buddha’s teachings on Views by Mark followed by Q&A 4 - Panel Presentation: Each teacher discusses skillful use of identity in their lives, 5-10 minutes each, followed by large group discussion facilitated by Gab

Reflections and guided meditation.

Buddhist Studies guided meditation led by Shelly Graf