What's it feel like to love someone? Maybe some of it could be romantic love like, “I’m in love with this person”. But also just like, “I really love that friend”. Not romantic at all, but I just really love that person. Maybe, ideally there's a sort of Buddhist concept that says, “You know, we wanna try to love all living beings”.
Read MoreMaybe it is the truth of uncertainty that creates the, tendency to worry. Because we just don't know what's going to happen, so anything can happen and often our mind will create the worst case scenario. Does your mind do that? People have different levels of minds that create worry, that create fear, that creates thoughts like “I’m not sure what's gonna happen, but it's probably gonna be bad, or it might be bad.”
Read MoreSome of this could be framed in Buddhist's ideas around karma, good karma, positive actions, wise actions, bad karma or negative, unskillful harmful ways of behaving. I think that most people are seeking a little less suffering. A a bit of an improvement in the quality of life. Aa bit of transformation, but not looking for total liberation.
Read MoreOne of the core sources of suffering, joy and sorrow in our lives is around finances and money. Around attachment, fear, worry, clinging and generosity. All of the associated stuff around our relationship to money. I'll discuss some of the Buddha's teaching, some of my own experience and what I take away from Buddhism in relationship to money.
Read MoreIt's normal to create joy and sorrow around sex and sexuality and that Buddhism offers some radical transformative perspectives of how to engage intimacy and sexuality and love with less suffering, perhaps not so much suffering at all, ideally.
Read MoreAm I still alive? Yep. Breathing in, still alive? Yep. Breathing out, feeling sensation, feeling emotion. Feel, the feeling life. And this reflection that we're not exempt from the end of life, the, decay of the body, and all of these different stages.
Read MoreEveryone owns the karma of their actions. We're forgiving, the confused being that acted in that unskillful way, not the action.
Read MoreIt said that one of the first levels of liberation or freedom from suffering is no longer being identified with or believing that you are your personality.
Read MoreSuffering is a part of existence for everyone, but it doesn't have to be. The dharma is for those of us who say, “I'd rather not suffer. I'd rather not be normal. I'd like to rebel against the normal status quo of human suffering. I'd like to, take this radical path of actually freeing myself from suffering. I defy the causes of suffering.”
Read MoreThe core of what I'm gonna talk about is acceptance. I ask you to reflect for a moment about what are some of the difficult things for you to accept about reality? What do you find hard to accept?
I believe it's part of our practice to see clearly and accept the world as it is. Right now, it’s like this, the world is like this. In no way does acceptance mean complacency. It means to see clearly what's happening in you and around you.
Read MoreThe promise of Buddhism is that it is possible to not suffer about the pain and difficulties in our life. What hinders your ability to not suffer?
The buddha gave a list of the 5 hindrances:
1. Craving for pleasure
2. Aversion to pain
3. Restlessness, anxiousness, and impatience
4. Laziness and procrastination
5. Self-doubt and unworthiness
Mindfulness allows us to slow down and name these hindrances without allowing them to overtake us and cause us suffering.
Read MoreJoin Noah for this special talk on his birthday as he reflects and shares about his story and the last 35 years of his practice and transformation through the Dharma.
Read MoreEmotional intelligence is about developing a wise relationship to human emotion through Loving Kindness and Meta practice.
The intention with these practices is to develop positive emotions so that we can more easily access kindness, compassion and forgiveness - towards others and ourselves.
Read MoreSuffering is normal, suffering is the reality of this world. But how do we take that suffering and learn to have a wise relationship to it?
Buddhism offers us a wise response to living on this planet. Compassion and equanimity are the solutions to suffering and through meditation we can access that loving, compassionate heart and that is our true nature.
Read MoreJoin Noah Levine for a special Q&A about the Dharma and this practice.
In this talk Noah answers questions from the community around mindfulness and how much benefit we get from learning to be uncomfortable.
Read MoreThe 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.
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