Part one of - three-month instructions, Day 5

The Buddha often pointed to craving as the cause of our suffering. Walt explores how craving arises and how we might come to the end of craving. Ajahn Sucitto said, "In fact, our craving is about something we don’t have... The source is the ‘not having.’" When we start to see this with mindfulness and clear comprehension, we have more freedom to choose healthy habits over unhealthy habits, and we can begin to value the wholesome over the unwholesome. This can eventually become the condition for great happiness.

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.

An overview of the seven awakening factors of mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy (pītī), tranquility, samādhi and equanimity, and how these work together to support conducive conditions for insight to arise

The guided meditation begins at approximately 11 minutes and 30 seconds. It is preceded by chanting, with an insightful introduction by Mark. The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.

The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.

Includes short explanation of being with thoughts mindfully and Guided Meditation with experiments.

Discusses how to be mindfully with these three protections.

The capacity to witness what is happening inside us with a non-judging attention allows us to respond to life from our full intelligence and heart. This talk looks at the role of witnessing in spiritual practice, and how we can cultivate this superpower in a way that reveals the light or spirit that lives through all beings.

How feeling-tone conditions reactivity when there's no mindfulness, then exploring vedanā in relation to the sense doors of seeing, hearing and the body

Final day guided, mindfulness instructions. Fourth foundation. Six sense spheres. Traces awareness. Just this.

Establishing a strong foundation of embodied awareness as an antidote to the tendency to be lost in the mind

The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.

The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.

A practical understanding how sati and dhammavicaya emerge as factors that lead toward awakening

This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.

Guidance on mindfulness of intention

Step-by-step, through the simple practice of mindfulness, the heart learns to let go.

We first review four foundations of wise speech: (1) developing presence in the midst of communication; (2) working with the four guidelines for skillful speech developed by the Buddha; (3) bringing our mindfulness and skillful responses to our thoughts, emotions, and body states into our speech practice; and (4) empathy practice, tuning into others' and our own emotions and sense of "what matters." We then explore the importance of being with challenges and difficulties in our practice generally, and do two exercises exploring a difficult or challenging interaction with another, including working with an "empathy map." Discussion follows. (Materials on emotions [or feelings], needs, and an "empathy map" are given below, under "documents.")

Retreat is a renunciant experience recommended by the Buddha. Through this we can clarify and collect our centre.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This guided meditation begins with a four-minute introduction. The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome. No registration necessary.

The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome. No registration necessary.

When we're not mindful of them, thoughts have so much power over our lives. These instructions are intended to help lead the way to freedom from these fleeting mental phenomena.

The family retreat 2023 at Spirit Rock focused on the Eightfold Path. This talk was on Samadhi-- or Wise Cultivation through Mindfulness and Meditation and was specifically geared to parents. How can parents practice mindfulness right in the heat of in daily life? Can we practice when we’re getting kids ready for school or putting them to bed, or fighting with our teen or when we're worried about them? Mindfulness can offer incredible tools to support parents in staying present, connected, awake, and in right relationship with our children, partners, and self.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.

The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.

After an introduction of the teacher, there is a 30-minute guided meditation. We set the intention to track for moments of reactivity, and then have the first 10 minutes or so for settling. Then there are several lightly guided suggestions of ways to practice with reactivity, including noticing moderate or a little greater experiences of pleasant or unpleasant, and seeing whether we move to wanting and grasping, on the one hand, or not wanting or pushing away, on the other. At the end, there is guided practice on bringing up an experience of reactivity and exploring it especially with mindfulness and the wisdom of appropriate response. The meditation is followed by a dana talk.

Focus: Mindfulness & Wise Effort

A guided practice to center, calm and collect the mind by abiding with clear comprehension and mindfulness, without desire and grief for the world.

Critical text analysis of how Anapanasati practice fulfills the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Discussion of the samadhi (step 11) and liberating the mind (step 12) from hindrances and self.

We first focus on the importance of the practice of wise speech and then review three foundations of such practice: (1) developing presence in the midst of communication; (2) working with the four guidelines for skillful speech developed by the Buddha; and (3) integrating our practice to be mindful and skillful with thoughts, emotions, and body states with our speech practice. We then introduce a fourth foundation, empathy practice, aiming to understand and connect with another, exploring the roots of such practice in the innate capacity of empathy. We then identify a simple yet basic practice of tuning into someone's emotions and "needs" (or what matters to someone), based on the work of Nonviolent Communication (developed first by Marshall Rosenberg). A discussion follows, particularly examining bringing these practices into challenging interactions. (Materials on emotions--or feelings, needs, and an "empathy map" are given below, under "documents.")

Questions are précised: 00:00 Q1 What do you mean by “re-wilding your mind”? 19:59 Q2 What’s the relation between pitti, sukka and chi. 25:05 Q3 Which comes first after sense contact, sannya (impression/ perception) or vedena (the feeling)? 28:00 Q4 Does the third sattipatana (the establishments of mindfulness) only include citta of mano / manus? 34:21 (LB) Q5 How to contemplate the “gunky” parts of the body – the organs that get diseased etc. 41:35 Q6 I have a sense of the experience of annica like a connection to dynamism. Impermanence has a very time bound quality to it. 42:31 Q7 How can one develop one’s yoniso manisakara to keep attention turned inwards?

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

This course examines the Buddha’s teachings on the five spiritual faculties of confidence, energy, mindful awareness, stability of awareness, and wisdom. It is the development and balancing of these five faculties that provide the force that moves the mind from faith to wisdom and release.

We examine first the Buddha’s teachings about awakening, We see how he understands the process as involving two processes. We are mindful of and work through what gets in the way of touching our natural awakening—greed, hatred, and delusion (or the two forms of reactivity—grasping after the pleasant and pushing away the unpleasant, along with ignorance about the nature of impermanence, reactivity or Dukkha, and not-self). We also develop those qualities which both support and manifest awakening, qualities identified in the teaching of the Seven Factors of Awakening. We see further how the Buddha at times identified the nature of awakened awareness as “signless, boundless, all-luminous,” and trace similar accounts of awakened awareness in the Thai Forest tradition and Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā. Then we ask the question about whether these wonderful teachings and associated practices are sufficient for awakening in the contemporary world. We point to how such teachings and practices are crucial but also need to be complemented by and integrated with a contemporary map of awakening, identifying forms of contemporary conditioning (and greed, hatred, and delusion) that are not found in the traditional account. Broadly speaking, we can identify two inter-related core areas—a first identifying more “psychological” conditioning, and more “social” conditioning (for example, around gender, race, sexual orientation, age, etc.). The talk is followed by discussion.

Basic instructions in developing concentration and stability, on the one hand, and mindfulness, on the other, are given in the context of the teaching of the Seven Factors of Awakening; concentration and mindfulness are two of the seven factors. We also explore inquiry or investigation, a third factor, in the context of mindfulness.

The weekly practice groups are designed to be a cornerstone for one's practice by providing ongoing instruction and teachings that will help illuminate the simple but challenging practice of mindfulness. The Buddha taught that mindfulness is the way to go beyond habits of distraction and grasping. To walk this path of wisdom and compassion, we need the support of a community that shares this intention. Each session includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and discussion. Both experienced and beginning meditators are welcome.

The support and functionality of Clarity and Mindfulness