The Buddha suggested reflecting regularly on five aspects of life called the Five Reflections (also called the Five Remembrances). This talk focuses on what he called "the most supreme of all meditations": mindfulness of death or maranasati. Although contemplation of one's death might seem unsettling or scary, when undertaken as a conscious practice it can be extremely enlivening and even liberating.

Opening to self, a good friend, and a neutral being

Grounding, breathing & soothing.

An invitation to notice how any sense of identification with our meditation practice can create a subtle pressure that interferes with the development of the awakening factors

We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath, and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.

An introduction plus a guided meta meditation

Meditation & Dharma Talk

In this guided meditation, Shaila Catherine introduces a progressive series of strategies to overcome restlessness, obsessive thinking, rumination, and habitual obstacles and hindrances. By freeing the mind from the fetter of restlessness, meditators calm their minds, develop tranquility, strengthen concentration, create the conditions for jhana, and incline the mind toward liberating insight and nibbana. These teachings are based on two suttas (19 and 20) n the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha.

Intention, effort & stabilising.

Bringing awareness to the quality of mindfulness itself, and as needed, infusing it with kindness, compassion, appreciation or equanimity

This session starts with a guided meditation (30 mins). Followed by a reflection on the Sister Sela sutta. The latter part is a questions and response session. For privacy, the questions have not been recorded, but it should still make sense.

Short instructions and guidance for investigating mindfulness of mindfulness itself

40:19 Q&A (questions are précised) 40:33 Q1 History and geography teach us that ten thousand years ago people were living in filth, like animals. Yet the scriptures speak of many thousands of eons of lives. How are these [two very different time frames] possible? 43:00 Q2 Could you please give more tips and advice for real beginners in meditation? 50:08 Q3 Regarding the four foundations of mindfulness, is there one which is more important? 53:57 Q4 I have come to see doubt as a most important hindrance in my practice. I even doubt the existence of that thing called enlightenment. How can I get rid of that? 58:46 Q5 Regarding sense restraint, can you say more about practicing with sound here. 1:07:54 Q6 How can householders go deeper into vipassana with the limited time in their lives? 1:12:31 Q7 Could you clarify how we would do the Buddho mantra in our daily tasks

As we quieten the noise of aversion and grasping, some stillness and calm can arise in the spacious welcoming of our experience. We can start to feel a freeing of the heart from our often limiting agendas and sense that heart-mind can stay open, connected and engaged, even when we struggle or are not in control.

A guided meditation inviting us to be wth our experience without aversion or clinging, staying open to whatever is arsing in our awareness. Acknowledging that at times we identify and then soldify and even calcify around a position or way of seeing, we explore if it is possible to engage and take a clear ethical stance, without falling into the trap of extreme polarisation. Attending to experience in this way can potentially soften, calm, and mute our habitual reactions.

Feeling tone (vedana), reactivity and spaciousness.

A guided meditation beginning with a reflection on gratitude, opening to joy, and then cultivating Mudita - joy in the happiness of others.

A brief introduction to generosity as the foundation of this path of practice, then exploring generosity as support for skillful mental qualities to arise

Especially when we’re stressed, we need pathways to an allowing, kind presence. This meditation guides us to relax and open through our bodies, and then meet changing waves of experience with a sea of awareness that is intrinsically allowing and tender.

Most of us have habitual ways we create separation from others. This talk takes a look at the roots of our emotional reactivity and ways our meditation practice can foster more loving connection in our lives.

Softening the mind's tendency to polarise: the cultivation of friendliness and good will as an antidote to reactivity.

Paying attention we will recognise how irritation, fear, anger etc lead to contraction that will feed and strengthen the perception of polarities and "either-or". Can we see this is happening, without judgement? Can we open and soften to this with kindness, curiosity, humour and a spacious attitude, thus diminishing the creation of dualities?

On this 54th anniversary of the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the 55th anniversary of his talk, "Beyond Vietnam," at the Riverside Church in New York, we explore the nature of Buddhist practice to transform racism, in the context of examining the nature of awakening in the contemporary world. We start by asking whether we may be undergoing a kind of "Fourth Turning," in which there is emerging an expanded contemporary sense of awakening, which includes the transformation of forms greed, hatred, and delusion not explicitly identified in the traditional understanding of awakening. Answering the question affirmatively, we point to two broad areas of ignorance, related to psychological material, and to social conditioning and institutions. On this basis, we then use the traditional Buddhist framework of training in wisdom, meditation, and ethics (and action) to give a preliminary account of a Buddhist approach to transforming racism. From a wisdom perspective, we look particularly at the Buddha's response to the caste system, and his sense of caste divisions as arbitrary (and empty) constructions, followed by looking closely at the constructions of whiteness, blackness, and race in the colonies in the 17th century, linked with greed and the strategy of divide-and-conquer, which have been central to maintaining racism since then. We then look more briefly at the nature of meditative and ethical training in the transformation of racism. A discussion period follows the talk.