Shaila Catherine is the founder of Bodhi Courses (bodhicourses.org) an online Dhamma classroom, and Insight Meditation South Bay, a meditation center in Mountain View, California (imsb.org). She has been practicing meditation since 1980, with more than eight years of accumulated silent retreat experience, and has taught since 1996 in the USA, and internationally. Shaila has dedicated several years to studying with masters in India, Nepal and Thailand, completed a one year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhana, and authored Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity, (Wisdom Publications, 2008). She has extensive experience practicing and teaching mindfulness, loving kindness, concentration, and a broad range of approaches to liberating insight. Since 2006, Shaila has continued her study of jhana and insight under the direction of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw, and authored Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana (Wisdom Publications, 2011).
This guided meditation explores the vast spacious clarity of awareness. It includes sounds and silence, bells and gongs, intertwined with inquiry into the nature of mind.
This talk explores the range of skillful effort, from ardent and zealous practice to spacious relaxation. Shaila points to a nondual realization that reveals our freedom in both action and in ease.
The teachers at Insight Meditation South Bay frequently guide meditation for the community. These recordings vary in length and style. They may include instructions for specific meditation techniques, introduce a dhamma theme, offer general mindfulness reminders, or present meditation instructions at the beginning of an otherwise silent session.
Please listen to these recordings in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Turn off your phone, and settle into a comfortable meditative posture. Plan to meditate for 30-45 minutes even if the recording is brief and verbal instructions last for only a few minutes. You may enjoy brief recordings at the beginning of meditation session, and then continue to meditate in silence for as long as you wish. Silent periods during longer recordings are intentional; moments of silence allow time for you to practice the instructions that were previously explained.
In this guided meditation, Shaila Catherine introduces a practice of mindfulness of the body by observing a sequence of touch sensations. This meditation guides practitioners to gradually move attention through a series of bodily locations where the feet, buttocks, hands, lips, and eye lids touch. At each location we pause to experience the present sensations that are known at that place of touching. After exploring touch points, we broader the field of attention to the whole body sitting. By alternating the focus of attention between precise and clear points of contact, and broad, restful, receptive awareness of the whole body, the meditator nurtures a clear bright balanced mind that can meet the present moment as it is.
Desire is usually described as a hindrance to meditation, but to realize deathless liberation we must want to be free. A burning desire to awaken opens the heart and mind to a possibility of freedom otherwise not known. This talk examines the force of desire as both a form of craving that perpetuates suffering, and as a necessary and wholesome factor that supports the realization of nibbana (nirvana) and the end of suffering. We examine hindrances, pain, and obstacles from which we want to be free in order to realize unconditioned awakening. Working with desire has some risks, but it is a powerful force that encourages curiosity, investigation, and openness to possibility—the possibility of discovering a profound fearlessness, and enduring happiness, the possibility of enlightenment.
