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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2014-10-21
Kamma and Intention: A Fresh Start
24:54
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk by Shaila Catherine was given as a part of the series "Enhancing Mindfulness Skills: A Seven-Week Series Dedicated to Cultivating Transformative Insight." Action influenced by intention is called kamma in the Pali language or karma in Sanskrit. We condition patterns, habits, and create pleasant or painful results through repeated intentional actions. The key to working with our patterns is not in the past, it is how we relate to present events. We are not condemned to dwell in any mental state. We have the potential to disentangle ourselves from suffering and cease creating causes for suffering. When we are mindful, we can notice the process that occurs between a stimulus and our response. Then, supported by calmness, wisdom, and clear intention, we stop reacting to life through the conditioned force of habit and may experience a truly spontaneous, free response to life.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-10-14
Many Kinds of Thoughts
41:01
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk was given by Shaila Catherine as a part of the series "Enhancing Mindfulness Skills: A Seven-Week Series Dedicated to Cultivating Transformative Insight."
Mindful of the thinking process, we explore how thoughts function in our lives. Unwholesome mental patterns can reinforce obsessive desires, identification, rigid opinions, and attachment to belief systems. What patterns are most common for you—planning, rumination, fantasy, rehearsing, daydreaming, judging, comparing, fixing, instructing? We observe the types of thoughts that arise, and reflect on whether those thoughts support our values and purpose. We learn to let go of unskillful thoughts and then focus our attention so that we use the mind skillfully. Buddhist tradition identifies three sources for proliferating thought: craving, conceit, and views. By examining the sources of conceptual proliferation, we can curb the wandering tendencies of mind.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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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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