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Dharma Talks
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2014-10-03
Speaking the Truth in Meditation. Listening Deeply
44:49
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Gregory Kramer
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In meditation, the truth is the truth of experience. To speak the truth, mindfulness is essential; its the only way experience can be known. This talk tracks the act of speaking from the wordless beginnings, through the tension behind the urge to speak (even innocuous speech), an onto the physical act. When the thread of sati is maintained, there is a natural authenticity, a coherence between experience and its symbolization in words. The deep of Listen Deeply is likewise traced, with mindfulness and concentration making possible a continuity of awareness. When such listening and speaking meet, the mind-to-mind transmission is of a different order from ordinary speech.
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Gaia House
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Insight Dialogue and Bhava - Becoming and Identification
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2014-09-23
Body: A Matter of Life
47:34
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Enhancing Mindfulness Skills: A Seven-Week Series Dedicated to Cultivating Transformative Insight." This talk focuses on "Four Elements." It is a traditional practice of mindfulness of the body. In ancient India, the materiality of the body was thought to be composed of four elements—earth, fire, wind and water. These four elements, in turn, have twelve characteristics—(earth) heaviness and lightness, hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness; (fire) heat and coolness; (wind) pushing and supporting; (water) fluidity and cohesion. All of these characteristics can be known with our mind and in our body. Discerning the characteristics of material elements will lead to a profound contemplation of impermanence and death. Seeing the impermanence of the body, we know we cannot control it. The body is not-self, it is not possessable, not I, and not eternally me. Understanding the impermanence of material elements and this body composed of elements, we learn to let go. This talk concludes with a guided meditation of body scans, with emphasis on the four elements and their respective characteristics.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-09-16
Breath: An Intimate Focus for Attention
45:06
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Enhancing Mindfulness Skills: A Seven-Week Series Dedicated to Cultivating Transformative Insight." How do we approach the breath? The breath can be used in a variety of ways to enhance mindfulness and to cultivate the insight into impermanence. Observing the breath calms the mind and allows us to tune into present moment experience. By observing the changes in breathing we can assess our feelings, emotions, and moods. Realizing the impermanent, conditioned, changing nature of the breath supports a skillful and powerful recollection of death. Let this contemplation of death be poignant enough to stir a sense of urgency. Reflect on what is really important in life.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-09-10
Transforming Unhealthy Habits through Mindfulness
1:24:50
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Hugh Byrne
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When harmful or unhealthy habits form, they can cause us much suffering and they can be hard to change because they are carried out automatically and without conscious awareness. Mindfulness is a key to changing harmful or unwanted habits as it provides skillful methods and practices to bring them into the light of awareness. Three elements of mindfulness are particularly important in changing unhealthy or unwanted habits - Intention, Attention, and Attitude. The talk explores these three elements with a focus on Intention.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2014-08-23
Opening Talk - Joyful Living
61:36
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Leela Sarti
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The practice of embodied mindful meditation opens the possibility to understand and transform our habits of dissatisfaction and distraction, and invites spaciousness and openness in our day-to-day lives. Becoming intimate, moment by moment, with living reality expands our life-perspective and attunes us to what really matters in life. We can invite the practice of mind-heart-body fullness and the reorienting, and inclining of the mind towards the natural capacity for well-being, contentment, delight and kindness.
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Gaia House
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Joyful Living
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2014-08-19
Mindfulness in Close Relationships
41:37
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Matthew Brensilver
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living." A real place for us to check our practice is in our relationships. After all, we are deeply relational beings. Sometimes, our deepest grooves in our minds are only stimulated in relationships. Defilements and habits of mind, such as greed, anger, and delusion, arise in ways that they don't in other situations. In other words, forces of suffering that are latent in other situations can arise in the context of close relationships. Fortunately, this is actually not bad news. Rather, it offers us opportunity to practice, to see ourselves more clearly, to become more free, and to see how we can untangle the love from clinging.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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In
collection:
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
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2014-08-14
Train for Nibbana
29:03
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Ayya Medhanandi
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On the path to freedom, every moment in every life situation is an opportunity for training the mind. We plant seeds of virtue, watering them with renunciation, respect, contentment, generosity and valiant effort. We clear the cobwebs of lifetimes from the mind with wisdom and mindfulness guarding us from the eight worldly winds, while forgiveness, love and compassion hasten the heart's awakening to Nibbana.
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Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
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2014-08-10
Be the First to Forgive
27:36
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Our greatest life journey takes us inward through the Dhamma MRI of mindful, radical investigation. At last, we learn to see clearly - with true discernment. We see the root causes of our suffering, disentangling the web of delusion and despair to take up our spiritual compass. As the heart opens, we teach ourselves to forgive, sure-footed and courageous, ascending to realize the heart’s true deliverance.
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Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
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2014-07-29
Intention, Motivation and Purpose
37:06
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Andrea Fella
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living." When we start to meditate, we notice how much our body and mind influence each other. In the teachings of the Buddha, he highlighted a quality of mind at which this point of connection between body and mind happens. It's a factor in the mind he called "intention" or "volition." Intention or volition is a mental urge that impels us to act. Every action that we do of body, of speech, of mind, has this impulse that precedes it. With practice, it is possible to see this urge or impulse. With an intention to act comes motivation -- the reason why we are going to do something or say something. The Buddha said that this is an interesting place to pay attention to, because when we are not aware of our motivations, our habits of mind (such as greed, aversion and delusion) are choosing our motivations for us, and often those habits are not so helpful. So at this moment of choice when we have this intention to act, the motivation that accompanies that intention is what will either lead us down the path towards more struggle in our lives, or lead us down the path towards more happiness in our lives.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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In
collection:
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
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2014-07-22
The Rebellious Path of Freedom from Habits of Mind
42:49
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Jason Murphy
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living." Vipassana takes our untrained mind as a starting point -- with its unruliness, hindrances, clinging and aversion -- and gives it a clear and systematic way of developing awareness. With practice, this awareness of what's happening within us and around us in any given moment is the key to not being a slave to our thoughts. It also teaches us to rebel against, or turn away from, our mind's tendencies towards greed, hatred and delusion; and instead, to incline our mind towards openness, freedom from attachment, freedom from suffering, loving-kindness, compassion, wisdom, and equanimity. This is the liberating power of awareness and mindfulness.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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Tuesday Talks
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In
collection:
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
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