Reflection & Guided Meditation on the Elements as Our Guides

Hedonic tone (vedanā) as a feature of human experience is the major factor in governing involuntary attention – vedanā rules much of our attention. The reflections unpack the role of feeling tone on attention, intention and the cultivation of mindfulness. Learning to cultivate attention beyond gratification and avoidance and to uncouple attention from pleasant or unpleasant feeling tone.

Somatic practice followed by a guided meditation

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation on Aspirations for the New Year | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene II | Online Wednesday-Mornings.

Guided meditation on metta for all beings.

This reflection and guided meditation was offered on January 1, 2025 for the New Year's Daylong and Bonfire. 00:00 - DHAMMA TALK / INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE BUDDHA 13:24 - GUIDED MEDITATION 32:48 - INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE BUDDHA

Teaching and guided meditation practice.

Body as a construct. On touch (phassa) and touching and being touched (phusati). Differing senses create a different relationship - 'seeing', 'hearing' and 'touching' as analogies for attending to something create a different kind of relationship to ourselves. The visual is overdetermined, often at the expense of touch. Feeling the body as an experience of touch rather than being 'observed'.'.

Reflections on sati - awareness - as a refuge. Grounding and settling in the body. The first guided meditation of the retreat.

Introduction and teachings on metta followed by a guided practice sending metta to a benefactor.

An Online Dharma Hall session includes a Guided Meditation, a Dharma Talk, and responses to unrecorded questions. A three-part series examining the role of passion, compassion, and dispassion on the Buddha's path to peace. This week, the disentangling release that comes from renunciation of paths that promise a happiness but don't deliver. What we can learn from compassionate engagement or the refined happiness of an unhindered heart-mind. And how they open the heart and mind to support us to let go of narrow (fiery, lustful) passions for a grander freedom (of meaningful purpose).

Our habitual ways of avoiding pain keep us from experiencing intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This short talk and guided meditation offers instruction in saying “yes” to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our truest nature (a reflection from the archives).

An Online Dharma Hall session includes a Guided Meditation, a Dharma Talk, and responses to unrecorded questions. A three-part series examining the role of passion, compassion, and dispassion on the Buddha's path to peace. This week, the freedom pathway and fruit of compassion. Including the interplay between compassion, forgiveness, and healing of the heart; the well-being that comes from the cultivation of a boundless expansive heart—and how this way we can resource ourselves beyond habitual routes (that don't really work) towards satisfaction and well-being that (really does).

Teachings on mindfulness of the heart/mind including guided practice recognizing and allowing our emotions, moods, and mindstates.

Guided Meditation on practicing with mind-states, both wholesome and unwholesome.

Metta stories, guided meditations...and sending well wishes to hyppopotamus.

Guided Meditation on using an anchor to settle the heart-mind.

A few words on establishing contact with reality and maintaining it and guided meditation.

Short Reflection & Guided Meditation | Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene II | Online Wednesday-Mornings.

At the time of the Winter Solstice, our practice (for the Wednesday morning gathering) connects our usual grounding in concentration, mindfulness, and lovingkindness with themes related to the later talk on the Winter Solstice, particularly opening to the unknown and mysterious, and to what is difficult, through mindfulness and compassion.

An Online Dharma Hall session includes a Guided Meditation, a Dharma Talk, and responses to unrecorded questions. A three-part series examining the role of passion, compassion, and dispassion on the Buddha's path to peace. This week, how we get fired up, impassioned, and passionate. Looking at where that is beneficial and when it isn't.

Guided Meditation on Embodiment, Compassion and Impermanence

When our body and mind is relaxed, we become filled with a very awake, dynamic quality of presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing, opening our senses and resting in the vastness and inherent freedom of our own natural awareness.

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).

We begin with basic instructions on settling, developing concentration, and mindfulness, with a few reminders to be present. Around 2/3 into the 40-minute meditation is a guided exploration of an experience of anger (the theme of the talk that follows is on understanding and practicing with anger).

Reflection & Guided Meditation

A gentle body scan guided meditation (Nikki), followed by walking meditation instructions and encouragement (Tuere).

A guided meditation on pervading the body and mind with metta (Loving-kindness)

Reflection & Guided Meditation on the Seven Factors of Awakening

Somatic practice and guided meditation

Guided meditation on standing meditation, bringing awareness to the body.