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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2021-11-11
Letting Your Heartbreak Open to Active Hope
53:05
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James Baraz
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How can we keep open and stay engaged when our hearts are breaking and we just want to shut down? How can we cultivate a "no-matter-what commitment" as Terry Patten teaches? How can we develop "Active Hope" as Joanna Macy calls it. That is the topic of this week's exploration. The talk includes a powerful 20-minute conversation between Joanna Macy and Thanissara that took place a month before this recording.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2021-11-10
Fear and Love
59:40
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Tara Brach
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Only when we face our fears can we discover the freedom to love without holding back. This talk looks at how unprocessed fear contracts our body, heart and mind, and on a societal level is the cause of othering and violence. We then explore how arousing mindfulness, compassion and prayer can enlarge our basic sense of Being. As we deepen attention to the nature of awareness, we discover a refuge that is timeless…a refuge that is our true home.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2021-11-10
Mother Trees, Our Elders
43:25
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Betsy Rose
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The Buddha famously taught that the Sangha is the most important aspect of “the Holy Life”. And Indigenous wisdom (and recent biology) teach us that natural systems are also a sangha, a web of connection, kept healthy by reciprocity and generosity.
Betsy reflects on the dharma of the “Mother Trees”, and how elders (and youth) feed the life of our human ecosystem.
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Assaya Sangha
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2021-11-07
Introduction to Awakened Awareness
63:37
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Donald Rothberg
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In concentration practice and insight practice, some of the structures of ordinary experience are deconstructed, including the separation of knower and known, the solidity of the object, and the will (which is absent in choiceless awareness). We then explore the nature of awakened awareness with references to how this appears in the teachings of the Buddha, the Thai Forest tradition, and the Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra traditions. Finally, some of the main accessing techniques to open to awakened awareness are described.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Settling, Seeing, and Luminous Awareness
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2021-11-05
Unsurpassed Is the Protection of the Dhamma
22:59
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Impermanence stares us in the face. How then can we free ourselves to understand the raw truth of what we are? There is a sorrowless state, a way out of the pains of life where we can abide in blameless happiness and inviolable peace. It may appear elusive and out of reach. Yet we need only incline our minds faithfully to giving up all that is false, divisive, fearful or fragile. We begin to know the joy that subdues all sorrow. One taste of that and we are on the Path, sheltered in the unsurpassed protection of the Dhamma.
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Ottawa Buddhist Society
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2021-11-04
Showing Up for Reality with Humility and Grace:
Terry Patten's Last Teaching
50:16
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James Baraz
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Beloved Philosopher, Teacher and Sacred Activist Terry Patten sadly passed away a few days before this talk. His last book, A New Republic of the Heart, is an inspiring teaching on how to face the global crises we are in. As he went through his own final journey he shared how one can face death with courage, wonder, grace and trust. It was a blueprint for how to meet the pain and sorrow of the world with those same qualities. This talk includes a powerful, clear, deeply moving clip excerpt of Terry's last teaching a week before he passed plus some of his teachings that have touched so many.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2021-11-04
Noble Giving Means Giving Oneself
58:18
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The quality of dāna, giving, is not dependent on materiality or even a charitable obligation. It’s a Dhamma practice that makes you stronger than you thought you were – it brings up your nobility. It’s a privilege to give because it makes you glad, and so the enlightenment factors arise in the mind. For the one receiving, giving brings forth integrity – one wants to live up to the offering. This is the dāna principle; everybody wins. This dāna is a step on the Path to awakening.
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Cittaviveka
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2021-10-29
A fruitful merging
59:24
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Structures can be helpful, but they only get you so far and then you have to trust something more deeply felt – mindfulness internally and externally, conscience and concern. That’s the ultimate system. The qualities of this spiritual intelligence then blend into something affirmative and potent. We can begin to relax who we think we are, focus instead on these spiritual qualities that merge into the deathless, and allow the unbinding of that fixation of self.
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Cittaviveka
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2021-10-28
Am I Enough?
53:06
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James Baraz
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A great Zen treatise says that someone truly enlightened is "without anxiety about non-perfection." It's no wonder that, with such impossible standards that most people hold themselves to, they always seem to fall short. How is it that others can so easily see our goodness while we're often the last ones to see our "True Nature"? The talk includes a short excerpt of Ram Dass sharing his primary practice to remember who we really are.
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Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
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2021-10-27
After the RAIN: The Flowering of Awake Awareness – Part I
56:19
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Tara Brach
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The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2021-10-27
Interdependence vs. Codependence
37:34
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Betsy Rose
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The Buddha's teaching on "no separate, solid, permanent self" guides us toward our interbeing, as Thich Nhat Hanh names it. We are made of innumerable causes and conditions, and the "self" changes as those conditions change. This teaching is a valuable antidote to the illness of individualism that plagues many western societies, but for many women, it also has a "near enemy"-- codependence.
How do we, as women, embrace and live this truth while not allowing codependence to drag us into unhealthy dependencies, and relationships where we feel overly responsible for others happiness? This talk explores the balance between interconnection, and healthy boundaries and non-harming of oneself through sacrificial self-denial.
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Assaya Sangha
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