Archive of Talks

How do we listen to the pulse of the world?  How do we listen to one another?  Our capacity for deep listening can be the source of healing, for others, and for ourselves. This week Stephanie shared with us the reflections of Jack Kornfield as he explored the path to healing, especially through the deep listening that… Read more

This Sunday Jeff H guided our Sangha as we listened to a very powerful talk by James Baraz titled “Seeing Beyond the Mask: Looking Past Our Assumptions”. In his teaching on the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha describes in the Second Noble Truth four kinds of attachments that cause suffering. One of these is attachment… Read more

The meaning of “faith” is complex and, for many of us, strongly colored by past experience. In Buddhist philosophy, the word is sometimes translated as “trust” and is based solely on our own experience. We have “faith”, after all, that the sun will rise because we’ve seen it happen so many times. It is not… Read more

Our perceptions shape our lives. Fortunately, with a little practice, we can perceive how we shape our own perceptions, and realize we are making our situations better or worse by how we perceive them. Then our whole understanding can be stood on its head, transformed: “Here in the dragon’s jaws—many exquisite jewels,” says the Blue… Read more

After leaving his cushy palace home in search of deeper insight into life, the Buddha spent most of his life in the outdoors, walking the roads, living in forests, sitting at the edges of rivers.  Most of the instructions on how to meditate begin with the direction to find the base of a tree at… Read more

Perhaps the easiest fundamental of the Dharma for almost everyone to agree with is anicca – that everything changes. On the surface, at least, it seems like common sense.  But if that is the case, why do we find it so difficult to let go of our preferences, attachments, and long-held ideas?  Sam guided our reflections on this conundrum… Read more