The importance of ethics comes back to karma and the truth that we are totally responsible for our actions. Karma means action and for every action there is a reaction.
When we are harmful or unethical we create suffering for ourselves and others. If you want to free yourself from suffering, Buddhism is how you can achieve that.
Read MoreMindfulness is the core technique that leads to freedom from suffering. All of the suffering in our life is a lack of mindfulness. Mindfulness gives us a choice.
Mindfulness is the practice of present time, non-judgmental, investigative, kind awareness.
There's a quality of mindfulness, which is contemplating and investigating and using your mind to look at what's happening. What is this? What does this feel like?
Read MoreWhat kind of personality do you have? The Buddha broke personalities down into three categories - greed, hatred, and delusion.
It is through mindfulness meditation that we will become more aware of our personality tendencies and begin to change our relationship to the ways that our personality tendencies create unnecessary suffering for us.
This path is about looking at the causes of suffering and how we can suffer less.
Read MoreThe Mind & Our Relationship to Our Mind
The reality is that most of our suffering is created in our own mind. The Buddhist path has the goal of ending suffering by radically changing our relationship to our minds.
Reflect on this question - How much of the time do you believe your mind? How often do you feel it's telling the truth? The more we meditate the more trustworthy our minds become.
Read MoreHow do you feel about death - Your own death and the death of those you love?
The Buddha encourages us to become intimate with death and to turn towards it rather than denying it and avoiding it. Becoming intimately connected with the impermanence of my own body and the impermanence of everyone that I love.
One of the most central teachings in Buddhism is the truth of impermanence and becoming aware of how much of the negative experience we create for ourselves by clinging to impermanence.
Read MoreWho do you need to forgive? Do you include yourself on that list?
What would it be like if you forgave your own mind for all the times that it’s unskillful, unkind, unloving, unforgiving, critical, judgmental, and insecure?
In this practice it’s important to work on forgiving those who have caused us suffering, but it’s equally important to forgive ourselves and more specifically, to forgive our own mind.
Read MoreJoin Noah Levine for a special Q&A about the Dharma and this practice.
Noah answers questions around the goal of Buddhism and the Eightfold Path, as well as, attachment in parenthood, where does humor fit into the dharma, and much more!
Read MoreBuddhist Mindfulness Meditation leads to transformation, rather than just an altered state.
When we follow the Eightfold Path and establish a mindfulness practice we turn towards our mind and our pain rather than the natural tendency to ignore or push it away. By training our minds in this way we develop wisdom and begin to end the causes of suffering.
Read MoreThe Buddhist path is one that leads towards an internal friendliness with our own mind and seeks out wise friendships with others who can walk the path beside you.
In this talk Noah discusses the 7 qualities we should look for in friendships and invites us to reflect if we poses these qualities ourselves.
Read MoreWhen we begin meditating something gives us faith, faith that this hard work will be worth it - What is it for you that gives you faith or confidence in the Dharma?
When it comes to the teachings of the Buddha having faith isn’t about trusting blindly, it’s about having confidence that this will help relieve suffering in your life.
In Buddhism faith is not demanded, it’s an invitation.
Read MoreFear is a natural part of the human experience, but it can often take control over our minds.
How can you begin to identify our fear and change your relationship to it?
As we apply the teaching of the Buddha we can gradually decrease the amount of fear we experience. It doesn't completely get rid of fear in the mind, but it allows us to respond with friendliness and compassion when fear is present.
Read MoreThe Buddha viewed the world as what he called Samsara - meaning a realm of perpetual wandering from one realm to the next. In Samsara there are three core causes of suffering - greed, hatred, and delusion.
The promise of Buddhism is that it is possible in this lifetime, through our own efforts, to free ourselves from greed, hatred and delusion.
Read MoreIn this Dharma talk Noah opens the room to questions about what parts of Buddhism are challenging for the sangha.
Read MoreWithout compassion what do you do with your pain? How do you naturally respond to your pain without meditation?
Buddhist meditation says through mindfulness of pain, turning towards pain and seeing that our natural tendency is to push it away or avoid it or replace it, we can begin to get intimate with our own pain and then learn mercy, compassion and forgiveness towards our own minds, our own hearts and our own bodies.
Read MoreFinding the balance of independence and healthy dependence. Ultimately the dharma is something that we embody, that we experience directly, and in understanding the teachings and how to apply them we find independence. Once finding independence we may no longer need guidance, but we still need each other, so we work to find the balance of independence and health dependence. We come to the Sangha looking for like-minded people to develop a healthy dependence with on the path to complete independence.
Read MoreEveryone has their own karma that they are fully responsible for.
A core message of Buddhism is that you have to do your own work - be compassionate, be loving, be generous - but remember that everyone has to do their own work.
Developing equanimity allows us to be compassionate towards others pain without taking on the responsibility to fix or change it.
Read MoreHow to meet pleasure with non-attached appreciation.
It is counter to our natural tendencies to meet our own experience with non-attached appreciation and to really meet other people's happiness with empathetic connection. It's not natural, right? This whole thing that we're trying to do is so radical. It's why the Buddha said this whole path goes against the norm, against the stream.
Read MoreThe Heart Practices with Noah Levine - Compassion
We develop compassion by first setting our intention to try. It likely won’t come easy, so we must commit to continuing to try and slowly developing compassion as a new skill or tool.
The untrained heart & mind hates pain. It is counter-instinctual to have compassion for our pain, but mindfulness helps us wake up to how we are feeling and there for respond more wisely - with more compassion.
Read MoreMetta is the practice of Loving Kindness.
In this meditation and dharma talk Noah discusses the importance of learning to train your mind to concentrate and how we can use the heart practices, the Brahma Viharas, as an object of concentration by choosing to repeat the phrases over and over.
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