Archive of Talks

  • Suffering: What can be avoided and what cannot

    A big part of the Buddhist teachings concerning suffering is the discovery that real life has pain, discomfort, sadness, and other events that we cannot avoid. The other part is the discovery that suffering coming from our relation to these events is often larger than the experience itself. But it seems so natural to fear… Read more

  • Living in the cycles of Deep Time

    This Sunday Ron guided our reflections, launching our discussion from a talk by Jack Kornfield, who offers us the invitation to change the perspective in which we view the phases of our lives, and the ways we discover and re-shape meaning as time unfolds. As he so often does, Jack reframes our approaches to our… Read more

  • Skillfully shifting the balance of practice

    While the past couple weeks we’ve discussed the elevated ideas about the nature of self, it is important to remember the importance of turning our concepts into intuitive wisdom.  To borrow a phrase from the yogic tradition:  lifting energy combined with groundedness leads to spaciousness. Dharma Teacher Michelle Macdonald explores this shifting balance in an insightful talk, excerpts… Read more

  • How to move beyond the suffering “self”

    At last week’s Sangha, we reflected on the notion of non-self in Buddhist thinking. This Sunday Margaret guided our continued exploration of this teaching, drawing on talks by Joseph Goldstein and Christina Feldman. We reflected on ways that recognizing the fabricated and shifting nature of what we think of as the self can lead us… Read more

  • Bhava, becoming

    The older we become, the more past selves we leave behind. The process of “becoming” is endless; we are different people in different contexts but also at different times. What happens to those other beings? Do they cease to exist when we become someone new, or do they remain stacked deep underground in the caverns… Read more

  • Many lists. One list. No lists.

    Steve guided our reflections this Sunday. Here is what he has to say: The Buddha dharma is rich with lists. The Four Noble Truths. The Five Skandhas. The Five Remembrances. The Noble Eightfold Path.Long lists. Short lists. One list after another and lists within lists within lists. Last week Sam encouraged us to consider the… Read more