The great Black American singer and songwriter Stevie Wonder once sang, “Love’s in need of love today.” His words couldn’t be more true as we face a global community struggling with war, poverty, illness, climate instability, and the rise of political authorities and governments who do not seem to be grounded in compassion or kindness. We speak about love and attempt to practice love but some of us are losing faith in the transformative power of the wish for ourselves and others to be happy. Our practice of love is in need of our renewed faith in love. In this talk, we explore the question of how practicing love can become a strategy that resists and undoes our experiences of fear, apathy, and numbness as we attempt to live and love in a challenging world.
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Loving Awareness: Finding Freedom Within
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February 26, 2023 “This thing person called “me”, the one who is sensing, thinking and perceiving right now….who or what is it? This is an age old question that the traditions of the East, especially Buddhism and Hinduism, have held as the heart of their traditions. The answer to that question, in some scriptures, is “awareness”, a part of us that is already wakeful, attentive, open, free and loving. In this Sunday teaching, we consider what it means to encounter awareness, and why it might be important, not only for our practice of meditation, but for the fulfilment of our life’s purpose.
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The Skilful Process of Transformation
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May 2, 2021 In this session, we’ll use the skilful means of mindfulness, mindful breathing and leading the nervous system into a parasympathetic state, to guide our mind towards organic spacious awareness. Within this relaxed spaciousness we’ll imagine the ways in which we wish to incline, head towards and become one with.
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How Conduct Bears Fruit: Training in Not-Killing
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February 21, 2021 In this session Shaila Catherine explores the fruits of karma and the consequences of action through a detailed consideration of why and how we practice ethical precepts. The focus for this talk is the commitment to not kill.
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The Path of Freedom, a Path of Integration.
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January 19, 2025 In order to live a more full and integrated life, we are welcome to acknowledge our strength and our fragility. Our silenced parts, the places that scare us and our shadows, with the right attitude and right view, can serve as a catalyst to our liberation. Holding dear our humanity as well as the liberating…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Miles Kessler – Week of June 5, 2023
This week’s topic is “Cultivating The 5 Spiritual Powers In Your Life”. The “5 Spiritual Powers” are mental faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, & wisdom. In this week of daily meditation, each day you will experience one of the 5 spiritual powers, and you will learn the best practices for awakening, developing, and cultivating these mental powers in your practice, and in your life.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Catherine McGee – Week of April 25, 2022
This week’s theme is “Exploring and Developing the Power of a Light Touch”. A light touch can allow our practice to unfold more easefully, make the depths of our hearts more available and create a greater agility in our relationships with the world. With our body as the primary ground for our practice we will explore different ways to cultivate this kind of attention, enjoy the fruits of our efforts and attend to what might hinder this natural capacity
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The Happiness of a Liberated Heart
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June 16, 2019 What is pleasure and what is happiness? Why is my pursuit of happiness not working? Is there any lasting happiness? Together we inquire into the nature of happiness. We reflect on different attempts in our lives to find happiness and what stops us from being contented. Inspired by the Buddha’s own quest for a genuine…
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Dancing with Dukkha and Sukha: Meeting the 10,000 joys and sorrows of our daily lives
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May 7, 2023 In this ever-changing landscape of living, the buddha dharma and psychological inquiry offer us skillful ways to pause and soften into the things that bring pain and suffering, while also reminding us to fully embrace the many contentments and connections life also beautifully and innocently offers. In our time together, Sarah will invite us to…
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