Archive of Talks

Ram Das said:  “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.”    Family of origin or close household family members have an outsized ability to touch our deepest triggers.  In a flash, our deepest insights and understandings can seem to vanish, to be replaced by reactivity that can heap suffering onto… Read more

Life can feel so demanding. At times, we may feel we don’t have enough energy, time, resources, or clarity to meet life’s demands.  Our heart can feel under a “constant squeeze”- the pressure to make things better or fix them, driven by a sense of lack that seems to touch everything.  How can we discover or… Read more

How do we keep our practice alive and applicable to life just as it is?  Sometimes, practice can feel effortless.  But at other times, being mindful or sending metta can be the last thing we want to do in a situation.  When this happens, and practice takes the back seat, what are some ways we… Read more

From the Buddhist teachings on emptiness to Plato’s allegory of the cave to a more modern view of the brain as a virtual reality machine, we are often told that what we think is real is actually more like an illusion… like a mirage, or a rainbow.   What are we to do with claims like… Read more

Our mind loves to feel safe, and in order to feel safe it wants to have control. If I think about my problems enough, will they go away? If I am careful enough, can I prevent pain? If I practice hard enough, will I stop feeling afraid? Most people would say no, of course not.… Read more

Continuing with our explorations of The Middle Way and personal agency/responsibility, this week we considered and discussed a talk by Kamala Masters. She has been practicing in the Theravada tradition since the 70’s. Anagarika Munindra (Munindraji) and Sayadaw U Pandita (trained under Mahasi Sayadaw) have been her primary teachers. Darryl led our Sangha this week. She writes: I have… Read more