The pathway to inhabiting our full presence is including, with mindfulness all parts of experience. This guided meditation explores how we can open, without resistance to the changing flow of sensations, feelings, thoughts and sounds, and discover the boundless awareness that is our true home.

How the cultivation of mindfulness and concentration, support, deliberation of heart and mind

A dhamma talk and Q&A to a Canadian dhamma group in Toronto 12 March 2023. Questions are précised: 30:12 Q1 - We all often slip in the practice. What is the best way to get back into it? 34:18 Q2 - How can we maintain mindfulness when we don't accomplish what you set out to do? How can we not let that frustration set us further back? 41:15 Q3 - I've noticed a real cultural difference between the East and the West in the sense of guilt and shame. Can you comment? 45:31 Q4 - During meditation what should I do to control my thoughts? More on this group here: https://www.theravadabuddhistcommunity.org/

Morning reflection on dukkha, and how to be skillful with thoughts

How the hindrances arise in metta practice, and how to meet them with mindfulness and antidotes. Especially focuses on the near and far neighbors of attached love and aversion.

With a wise expectation of the three kinds of vedanā, we steady our mindfulness to intimately connect with unpleasantness, pleasantness, and neutral experiences. This is the first step with vedanā. The second is to cool off the old habits of reactivity , and the third is seeing vedanā is not inherent in the objects of our attention. Vedanā arises due to contact with the 6 sense doors, and operates on its own independent conditinality. This is difficult to see in daily life, and a precious opportunity on silent retreat.

Key to all of our suffering and eventual freedom, mindfulness of vedanā disrupts our unconscious struggle to reject unpleasant experiences, crave pleasant experiences, and ignore neutral experiences. Since vedanā is a tone or aspect of every moment in the stream of our consciousness, it beocmes increasingly clear our agitation with life begins with reactivity to vedanā, and the training of a new kind of well being comes as we develop the ability to breath inside the stream with all three vedanās.

Exploration of the three anchors – mindfulness of sound, body sensation, and breathing

In this talk of a series of talks on developing metta or lovingkindness, we look at the question of how we connect and integrate metta with our development of clear seeing, with our mindfulness and wisdom. This is an important question, particularly given that most Western practitioners of insight meditation have separate practices in which they develop metta, on the one hand, and mindfulness and wisdom, on the other. Are they integrated? How? In the talk, we explore: (1) related strong cultural tendencies to separate mind and emotions, as in, for example, science, and much education; (2) how in the basic teachings of the Buddha, there seem to be separate practices; (3) how, both in the teachings of the Buddha and in later Buddhist traditions (as well as in other traditions), there is often a deeper vision of the unity of the awakened heart and mind; and (4) how we can practice to integrate metta, mindfulness, wisdom, and awareness.