In these hyped up divisive times, there is an ever-greater need for tools to de-condition ourselves from reactivity. The practice of listening – within ourselves and with others – is much more significant than we often acknowledge. The contrast of receptivity against the backdrop of a world conditioned to impose, label, judge, and solve, is the contrast between non-violence and violence. By learning to take life in from a place of compassionate neutrality, we shift from spectator to engaged participant. We shift from judgment to clear seeing. And from separation to interconnection.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of September 5, 2022
This week’s topic is “Awakening into Experience Here and Now”. “You shouldn’t chase after the past
or place expectations on the future.
What is past
is left behind.
The future
is as yet unreached.
Whatever quality is present
you clearly see right there,
right there.
Not taken in,
unshaken,
that’s how you develop the heart.” (MN 131)The essence of the Buddha’s teachings lies in these words. Unshakability and freedom are at the heart of awakening, they are what we cultivate in our practice. This week we will practice turning to our experience in ways that wake us up, right here and now.
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Understanding and developing Citta (heart-mind)
Recorded :
January 28, 2018 All schools of Buddhism acknowledge that the development of Citta is an essential aspect of the awakening process. Within classical Mindfulness teachings, it encompasses the entirely of the third foundation of practice. At its core, it encourages us to recognize the presence and absence of greed, hatred and delusion. In its fruition it points to…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Leela Sarti – Week of March 7, 2022
This week’s theme is “Nurturing a Long View and Living Now”. It takes a lot of heart and presence to live a satisfying and meaningful life. Our inner patterns of resistance and reactivity often make us short sighted and contracted, and yet we have the potential to live from a timeless presence and embody beautiful human qualities such as wisdom, care, passion and originality. How can you make your time on earth something beautiful to behold? How can you live now with zest, courage, and love? How can you be a good ancestor for the ones that will live 100,000 years from now?
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Resting in Love, as Love
Recorded :
July 9, 2023 Consciousness itself is not disturbed by a busy mind. In practice, the ego takes this truth and says, “I will transcend mind.” But the “I” that experiences itself as separate from life cannot and will not ever know liberation. There is no such thing as an enlightened ego. What else is possible? Resting in Love,…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of June 13, 2022
This week’s topic is Healing Shame and Guilt. Psychologists describe shame as soul-eating emotion. Shame and guilt prevent us from developing trusting connections with others and a healthy sense of appreciation for ourselves. The Buddha taught that systems of self-reference such as shame and guilt can cause pain and stress. To find liberation is to find freedom from these deeply harmful emotions. We will look at practical ways to find such freedom in our own lives.
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The Phases of Insight
Recorded :
April 7, 2024 Similar to the phases of the moon, our spiritual practice is full of natural rhythms and seasons. In this session we will learn a simple chart, called the phases of insight, that supports recognizing what can unfold at various points in meditation. By learning these patterns we can open our hearts with more confidence, and attune to…
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The freeing of human consciousness: from seeing the world ‘out there’, separate and alien, to directly knowing, feeling, and living the intimacy of all things
Recorded :
February 18, 2018 The Shurangama Sutra, which points out the foundations of Zen practice, discusses the essential nature of mind as the “primal essence of consciousness that brings forth all conditions.” Implied is the heart-mind (citta) both profoundly intimate with all things while at the same time free and independent of all things. How is it to live…
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The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love
Recorded :
October 7, 2018 When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion. When we know ourselves as a whole which subsumes everything, we cease to diminish or dismiss the mystery of being human….
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