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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2025-03-22
Three kinds of Nibbana in our western Insight traditions
52:57
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Tempel Smith
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Within our blessed lineages of Venerables Ajahn Cha and Mahasi Sayadaw, and the teachings within the Pali Canon, we have found three kinds of nibbana. Nibbana is closely related to the full liberation from dukkha (suffering). To even talk about one kind of nibbana can be difficult as it is beyond language, yet there is another confusion within western Insight meditation. By practicing in Mahasi's Burmese meditaitons, in Cha's Thai Forest meditations, and here in North America, there are roughly three kinds of nibbana: a) an unperturbed background field of awareness, b) a perfect zero of cessation, and c) a stream of transient mind-body moments without greed, hatred or craving.
Knowing of these three kinds of nibbana can clarify what our vipassana practices are aimed at.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
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2025-03-16
Q&A
43:58
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Questions are précised. 00:36 Q1. Can you please clarify the difference between awareness and presence; 09:04 Q2 I became a monk but left due to overwhelming negative meditation experiences which are still continuing. Can you suggest something please? 15:24 Q3 In the evening I think I would like to get up early so there’s more time for practice; 19:42 Q4 I’ve been a Buddhist for 35 years but only recently have started to open up the heart. I’ve never been able to cry, only anger and depression. Since my mother died I cry a lot, even through the day. What can I do?22:43 Q5 I’m on two and a half solitary retreat. I use body practices but I am experiencing migraines. What can you suggest; 27:42 Q6 I live by myself after being asked to leave by house mates with no explanation. In my new place the neighbours pick fights with me and yell at my door. My previous housemates said I was psychotic. I am depressed. How do I not loose heart? 42:18 Q7 How can one embrace this human existence and remain unattached to any identity?
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Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
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2025-03-13
Intro to Lovingkindness class 4: Metta Can Transform Difficulty
1:11:50
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Dawn Neal
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Introduction to Metta (lovingkindness) - Week Four Homework:
Daily meditation:
Offer kindness/goodwill to an easy being (or benefactor) & self, then someone or some part of you that you find difficult. Please practice 20 minutes or more a day. Remember, it is always okay to return to a being that is easy.
It can also be very skillful to switch to mindfulness.
Integrating mindfulness into metta practice can increase wisdom. This can be done by noticing what is and isn’t metta, without judging –or buying into–other emotions or experiences.
In daily life, notice when Metta is present and when it isn’t. What are conditions that help it arise? Decrease?
Appreciating the wish for metta, being interested in it, attending to it, helps to strengthen it.
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Insight Santa Cruz
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Introduction to Mettā (lovingkindness) meditation
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2025-03-13
Instructions and Guided Meditation: Choiceless Attention
59:12
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Tempel Smith
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There is a style of mindfulness practice where we lightly attending a central, familiar anchor of attention, such as the breath or scanning the body, and then intentionally choose to watch our minds move through its habits and its nature. In this style of mindfulness practice we can watch our attention move through our six sense doors of stimulation. With this style of meditation we can directly see the dharma nature of our mind.
With this style of practice we have to be careful we not lose attentiveness, which can be a shadow side of choiceless attention. We want to keep learning and discovering the dharma, and not space out into half committed mindfulness.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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March Insight Meditation 1-Month Retreat
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2025-03-11
The Peace Beyond
29:37
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Mark Nunberg
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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.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-03-11
The Peace Beyond
41:30
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Mark Nunberg
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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.
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Common Ground Meditation Center
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Weekly Dharma Series
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2025-03-06
Intro to Lovingkindness class 3
1:20:52
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Dawn Neal
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Week Three Homework:
1. Daily meditation: 15-30 minutes per day if new, normal amount if experienced.
At least 2/3 to easy being or benefactor and self, then someone neutral.
Experiment with single words/short phrases or gestures to build stability/concentration
Always okay to return to where it’s easy, or switch to mindfulness.
2. Micro-practice: offer pulses of kindness, privately, to strangers or neutral persons in the course of each day
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Insight Santa Cruz
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Introduction to Mettā (lovingkindness) meditation
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2025-02-28
Intro to Lovingkindness class 2
63:28
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Dawn Neal
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Homework for this class is:
Daily meditation: 15-20 minutes per day if new, normal amount if experienced.
--At least 2/3 metta for easy being/benefactor & self. (start with easy being if it’s helpful).
--Up to 1/3 mindfulness (or end with a bit of mindfulness).
--If it gets challenging, return to where it’s easy.
2. Micro-practice: Stop, notice, appreciate, kindness/positive regard for self or others: Appreciation, gratitude, or inspiration as a form of mindfulness. If you don’t notice in daily life, recall/write down a few in the evening.
Due to a recording error, the second mini lecture was not recorded.
The topic was the Buddhist and Scientific rationales for cultivating lovingkindness for oneself. The scientific study referenced is entitled "Open Hearts Build Lives," by Barbara Fredrickson, et al.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=-0XLchUAAAAJ&citation_for_view=-0XLchUAAAAJ:geHnlv5EZngC
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Insight Santa Cruz
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Introduction to Mettā (lovingkindness) meditation
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2025-02-16
An Appropriate Response
44:22
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Pamela Weiss
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In an old Zen story, a student comes to see his beloved teacher who is on his death bed and asks: Tell me, what is the teaching of your entire lifetime?
And the teacher replies: An appropriate response.
Tonight's talk will explore what it means to respond appropriately to a world on fire.
To support San Francisco Insight Meditation Community, please go here: sfinsight.org/donate
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San Francisco Insight Meditation Community
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2025-02-09
Responding to Reality with Heart: Compassion and Equanimity
35:31
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Eugene Cash
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The world suffers. But most people have their eyes and ears closed. They do not see the unbroken stream of tears flowing through life; they do not hear the cry of distress continually pervading the world. Bound by selfishness, their hearts turn stiff and narrow... It is compassion that removes the heavy bar, opens the door to freedom and makes the narrow heart as wide as the world.
~Nyanaponika Thera
To support San Francisco Insight Meditation Community, please go here: sfinsight.org/donate
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San Francisco Insight Meditation Community
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2025-02-08
Stay in your boat
31:11
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Retreat is an occasion in which to repair, reset. In terms of life and meditation practice. In this process, mindfulness is accompanied by atapi - ardour, keeping things fresh - and various forms of clear comprehension (sampajano): to sense what is appropriate and fitting. Through referring to what arises in terms of objects one cultivates comprehension of purpose: to know objects as they are, and not self. This is comprehension in terms of non-delusion. There is also comprehension in terms of context (gocara), both internal and. external.
This cultivation brings stillness in the midst of conditions, and if we keep this going results build up. Through sustaining clear comprehension one realizes an openness that is stable, alert and all-encompassing
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Cittaviveka
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2025-02-05
Guided Meditation: Exploring Some Further Ways We Construct Experience
35:51
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Donald Rothberg
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We start with basic instructions in developing (1) concentration and stability, and (2) mindfulness, and then practice developing these two qualities. With mindfulness practice, we notice the main patterns of thoughts, emotions, and bodily experience. In the second half of the session, we work with being aware of the feeling-tone (linked with the Second Foundation of Mindfulness), noticing moderate (or somewhat greater) pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tones, and what occurs after we notice them. We also attend for a short period of two minutes to the moment-to-moment feeling tones of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and then go back to basic mindfulness practice for the last part of the session.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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