Dharma Seed: dharma talks and meditation instruction

(True North Insight)

(True North Insight)

(True North Insight)

(True North Insight)

(Cittaviveka)

(True North Insight)

(True North Insight)

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge)

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge)

(True North Insight)

(True North Insight)

(True North Insight)

(Meditationszentrum Beatenberg) Our actions are often driven by unconscious or conflicting intentions. How can we align with wholesome intentions and cultivate wholesome mindstates? Based on the Dvedhāvitakkasutta the talk discusses the importance of renunciation, metta and compassion for the path and the transformation of the heart.

(True North Insight)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Teachings on how to practice metta for ourselves, including poetry by Jane Hirshfield and a story by Father Gregory Boyle. Guided practice in receiving care and sending love to our younger self.

(True North Insight)

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We continue to explore the nature of awakening. In the first 2/3 of the talk, we examine the traditional notion of awakening, as going beyond the habitual constructions of experience in all the parts of our lives. These constructions are rooted in reactivity (grasping and pushing away aspects of our experience), and a sense of self along with a world of objects known conceptually (through "signs"). We look also at the more positive sense of awakening to the "signless, boundless, and all luminous," to what the Thai Forest teacher Ajahn Mun calls the "primal mind." Then we ask about whether there are other dimensions to awakening needed for contemporary awakening, and examine in particular what awakening means in a time of turmoil. We take Thich Nhat Hanh as an exemplar--a practitioner dedicated to awakening practicing and teaching amidst the turmoil of war and exile. We outline a number of suggestions and guidelines for those practicing and awakening amidst the current turmoil.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) 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.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A brief overview of noting practice as done using sounds, body, or breath as our primary anchor. Description of how to use perception (sañña) as the proximate cause for a moment of mindfulness to arise, followed by a silent 30 min meditation.