Tonight I’m going to talk about the aspect of our practice of Buddhism that is about creating a positive change in the world: service, generosity, engagement.
How are you using your life’s energy to create change? What compassionate actions are you taking? How are you helping others? What kind of service are you involved in?
Read MoreThere's a question about how do we ideally practice intimacy, sexuality, romance in the Dharma. Where there's all this emphasis on non attachment. How do we have love and non attachment?
How do we have sex and not cling is the topic tonight. We're going to talk about sex tonight, and I'll share some Buddhist perspectives.
Read MoreTonight we're going to talk about appreciation, appreciative joy, empathy, attunement and gratitude. May you be successful at freeing yourself from suffering. May you be successful at finding true happiness, true well being Not just material and sensual pleasures, but may you have some real healing, some real awakening. May your path lead to freedom. This is a practice of having that sort of attitude and encouragement and training our heart to feel it.
Read MoreI think a simplified way to think about equanimity is “keeping your cool”. Similar to the loving kindness teaching “being at ease” no matter what's happening, not just when life is easy, but also when life is quite difficult. Maintaining a sense of equanimity, ease, cool, well being, understanding and accepting that pain is unavoidable. That we will all experience pain in our lives and try to meet that with compassion.
What does Equanimity mean to you? What is the most challenging area in your life to be equanimous?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreI'm going to talk about, and we'll meditate on, compassion tonight. Compassion is one of the qualities that is so rare for humans to have… true compassion for ourselves, for our own pain… true compassion for others, including not just our loved ones. There are certain people who are easier to have compassion for than others, but the practice is to actually have compassion for all living beings.
Where do you feel compassion in your body? What does compassion mean to you?
Read MoreWe just, we just did completed a 10 week series on the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness and the four foundations of mindfulness. We took two and a half months to go through that. I wanted to shift from the mindfulness based meditation instructions to heart practices. Practices around developing kindness and compassion and forgiveness and appreciation, generosity. So I think I'll spend the next few weeks doing meditations on that. I thought I'd start tonight with the kind of umbrella term of kindness, the importance of kindness and the practice of kindness.
How do you express kindness? What’s your love language? Does it come naturally to you? What’s your practice around kindness?
Read MoreWe're at the final section of the teachings on mindfulness that I've been discussing over the last couple months. This section is about mindfulness of the Four Noble Truths. Turning our awareness towards our experience of suffering, the cause of suffering, those times where we're not suffering, the cessation, the end. Those moments throughout our lives where there's no suffering and the goal of living more and more into a life where we're not suffering about what's happening. And the eightfold path that leads to the end of suffering. So I'm going to share some of the traditional teachings about that.
How do you know when you’re suffering? What does suffering feel like? What are your experiences with suffering? What are some of the ways that you know that you are suffering? What are some of the things that you suffer about?
Read MoreMindfulness is the seventh aspect of the Buddha's eightfold path. The eight Aspects of practice that will lead to freedom from suffering. Alleviating the unnecessary levels of suffering that we experience. There are four foundations of mindfulness.
What do you think enlightenment is? What does it mean to be enlightened? What do you think that would be like? Does it seem desirable? Is that your goal?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreThe section tonight is mindfulness of the six sense doors, mindfulness of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling bodily sensations, and mindfulness of thoughts of the mind.
Do you use the sense doors as a mindfulness practice? Which sense is the most challenging for you to remain present with? Is it pleasant? Is it unpleasant? What's happening at the eye awareness? What's happening at the ears, at the nose, at the tongue? What's happening in your body, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant or neutral?
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Read MoreThe topic for tonight's aspect of the mindfulness teaching is the five aggregates or five Sconda. The five aggregates, probably the best translation, it's the five aspects of our experience that we tend to be identified with as self. The aggregates, sometimes this term sconda or aggregate, is also like a heap.
The different heaps of our or piles the, uh, different, um, piles of experience that we tend to consider “that's who I am”. The, the first one is our bodies. The aggregate of a physical form. We have a body. The second one is our mind. We have a mind that thinks and plans and remembers. The third one is perception of feeling tone, of feeling pleasant, unpleasant, neutral.
What percentage of the time do you believe your thoughts? How much of the time is it true?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreTonight's topic is the Buddha's teachings on how to train the mind to see clearly and to to free ourselves from suffering. We're on the fourth section tonight, which I think I'm going to spend three or four weeks on this fourth section, mindfulness of the Dhammas. Dhamma translates as Dharma, as what's true. But it starts with the five hindrances. So tonight we're going to meditate, discuss and look at the text on the mindfulness of the five hindrances.
Why would I ever move my body? What motivates you to take action? When you look at the suffering in your life, do you feel that there’s more suffering caused by clinging to pleasure or avoiding pain? Which of the 5 hindrances do you experience the most?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreTonight's topic is the third foundation, which is the mind, our brains, how to bring mindfulness to what your brain is doing, what kind of thoughts are arising, what kind of attitude the mind has. Whether the mind is experiencing wisdom or ignorance. For many people it's one of the things that really sets Buddhist meditation apart and mindfulness apart from a lot of other meditations.
How much do you believe your thoughts? What’s your relationship with your mind? If your mind played music, what kind of music would it play? What’s your mind like? What’s the tendency of your mind?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreSo for a topic tonight: your relationship to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. Just thinking about these three feeling tones. Maybe there's somebody here who you know, joining us tonight, who feels like actually pleasance is quite hard to tolerate…
What’s your relationship to positive, negative and neutral experiences? What are you drawn to, pleasure, pain or neutrality? What's more difficult for you?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreTonight I'm going to do a little bit on this mindfulness of the body, becoming mindful of the four elements in the body and then we're going to do a meditation. It's called a charnel ground meditation or a corpse meditation, where we reflect on the impermanent nature of the body. Then we'll have some discussion about death.
What’s your relationship like with death? When’s the last time you experienced death? How do you relate to the fact that your body is only going to live so long?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreTonight I'm going to continue what I started last week and probably will do the next few weeks. It's the Satipatthana, the four foundations of mindfulness the way they chant it, as they practice it in the monastery.
What’s your favorite part of your body? What’s the part of your body that you have the most difficulty with? What are the parts that you don’t really want to be mindful of? What’s your favorite part and why?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreTonight I'm going to start what will turn into several weeks series on mindfulness, the seventh factor of the Eightfold Path and the primary meditation technique that the Buddha taught and encouraged for freeing ourselves.
Freeing ourselves from the causes of suffering. Mindfulness, present time inquiring with an attitude of friendliness or kindness, meta loving kindness attitude.
What is your direct experience right now?
#AgainstTheStream #Buddhist #Meditation
Read MoreI’ve gotten some sh*t for saying this in the past, but I haven't learned.
Some of Martin Luther King's views and politics, I believe, are inspired by Buddhism. One time I gave a Dharma talk that MLK was a Buddhist, and then I got a whole bunch of sh*t about it, because he was very much a Christian. But a lot of his politics in civil rights and in fighting ignorance and oppression were influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent approach to creating change.
What’s some of the craziest sh*t your mind does? What does your mind tell you?
Read MoreI'm going to talk a bit about the Buddha's first noble truth, that the beginning of the path to freedom starts by acknowledging and turning towards becoming fully aware and breaking any shred of denial that we might have about our suffering, about the dukkha, about the sorrow, the grief, the sadness, the loneliness, the afflictive emotions that we experience as humans. As well as all of the loss and the sadness and difficulty, the difficult situation that we're all born into.
What kind of sorrow have you experienced in your life? In the world? About yourself?
Read MoreI feel like the core of what I'm going to talk about tonight is Sangha, it's community and the importance of drawing near and sustaining connections with Sangha. With people who are wise, or at least trying, attempting to be wise and have the intention to be wise.
Read MoreSo I don't have a have a Dharma talk really for tonight. I'll share a couple of reflections. Last week I was in Thailand for the second time in a month, just a short trip. I went out there with my friend Russ, who's here in the room tonight, to interview Ajahn Amaro who's been one of my core teachers. He's a Buddhist monk, he's an English guy who's a Buddhist monk for like 40 something years…
What comes up for you around the holidays? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Do you bring your practice into it?
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