Shodo Harada Roshi is known as a “teacher of teachers”, with masters from various lineages coming to sit with him in Japan. If you went to Harada’s monastery, the main meditation technique you’d learn involves slowing the out breath to last one minute. This drastically slows down your physiology, which in turn settles the mind.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 21 October, 2024
This week’s theme: The Joy of Simplicity
Simplicity, joy and deep rest are profound qualities which support our spiritual journey. During this week we will explore the simple depth of Buddhist practice and listen to the enchanting morning talks of abbot Linji from 875 from his monastery at the river Huoduo.
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The Harvest of Goodness
Recorded :
September 8, 2024 The harvest is a beautiful and important part of life each year. A time when our good work bears fruit and people are fed. A time of thanksgiving and prayers. How do we participate in the harvest with our spiritual practice? In this Sunday Sangha session with Drs Larry Ward and Peggy Rowe Ward, we…
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Nothing is reliable outside liberation.
Recorded :
May 8, 2016 Practice places emphasis on seeing impermanence. Such a practice easily becomes habitual to the degree we miss the point. There is nothing reliable owing to impermanence. There is nothing we can depend upon in this world of mentality and materiality, inner and outer. If we abide deeply clear about this, the stress and fears fade…
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Mindfulness Approaches to Working with Anxiety
Recorded :
September 16, 2018 Who is not anxious these days? Whether faced with the daily stresses of finances, jobs, responsibilities, parenting, family, or the ongoing anxiety of political events and ecological crisis, most of us are anxious. In the US, anxiety rates have risen to 18% of the population, and 25% in Europe for those struggling with depression and…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Apr 29 – 3 May, 2024
This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.
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Daily Meditation Recordings with Yahel Avigur – Week of September 30, 2024
This week’s topic is “Samadhi: A Path of Reliable Joy”. One of the central lines in the teachings of the Buddha, the practice of Samadhi is the skill of harmonized, gathered presence. It is based on mindfulness and discernment, leading to deepening wisdom. In this week of practice, we will cultivate a set of meditative skills that lead to such reliable joy.
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You Are NOT Doomed: Breaking & Replacing Old Patterns
Recorded :
March 26, 2023 You may have noticed that sometimes breaking old patterns is hard to do! But thanks to surviving ancient Buddhist teachings, we are NOT doomed to being stuck in the rut of the same old painful behavioral and cognitive patterns, and we can create new helpful patterns. This talk explores the nature of the conditioned mind…
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The Conscientious Heart: An exploration of Appamada and the Elephant’s Footprint
Recorded :
March 3, 2024 We will explore through practice and teachings the importance of “appamada” or heedfulness, conscientiousness, or what Stephen Batchelor has translated as care. Appamada has been called the path to the deathless. ” Just as the footprints of all living beings with legs can be encompassed by the footprint of the elephant, and the elephant’s footprint is…
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