Archive of Talks

We have each been tasked with a huge project called “my life”. Moment by moment we are steering this project, trying to maximize our happiness. Using feedback from feeling in the body, our thinking mind evaluates our experience and creates strategies. The main tool of the mind is language, our constant self-talk.  In a talk… Read more

Faith is often translated from the Pali language, as saddhā, which means “to place the heart upon”. However, in these times of great change and crisis, what do we place our heart upon? Buddhism teaches that everything is changing and impermanent. So, how do we cultivate the wisdom and the resolve to act, when there… Read more

Though magick and mysticism have a place in most world religions, their significance is often not appreciated. Yet the prevalence of such practices in spiritual life —even in the Buddhist canon—raises the question of their appropriate place in our models of practice and awakening. This Sunday, Tucker traced the magickal elements (commonly referred to as… Read more

What is the experience of gravity on your mind? It’s very common in our culture to separate the mind from the body as though they were separate entities, living their own lives, just coincidentally in the same place some of the time. While there are certain lenses through which this concept seems true, we often… Read more

Many Buddhist teachers remind us in multiple ways that we are not what we seem to be, the separate embodied selves from which our ego identities rise. Instead, we are encouraged to discover that we are the wind, the rain, the ocean, the mountain and the stars.  What does that mean, and how can we… Read more

At first, it can come as a surprise that Not Knowing can be so crucial to Dharma practice.  In most of our engagements in the world – school, work, friendship, counseling, and so forth – the last thing we want to say — to admit — is that we don’t know.  Yet in Buddhism, that very response… Read more