Archive of Talks

  • Equanimity:  Cultivating the Heart’s Natural Capacity

    Equanimity (Upekkha) is often misunderstood as detachment. However, it can be seen as the ease that arises from “seeing the full picture” — the capacity to feel everything fully while remaining steady. Can we care deeply without needing to control or have things go our way? How do we hold our experiences with both tenderness and… Read more

  • Grasping in the modern age

    You might say that the modern world is built on grasping and clinging. We are conditioned from childhood to seek pleasure and distraction, and to avoid pain and discomfort. If there is anything we want, be it music or media, information or directions, it is at our fingertips. Certainly this availability has improved many aspects… Read more

  • The Great Turning Starts with Gratitude

    How do we turn the ship heading towards disaster?  Joanna Macy, who passed away recently, was one figure who popularized the idea of “The Great Turning,” in which we collectively turn away from our habitual self-centered way of being in the world to a connection based on awareness of our interdependence.   For decades, she led… Read more

  • The Buddha was a Yogi: his early practices

    After his encounters with sickness, old age and death, Siddhartha Gautama’s sought answers to life’s suffering from the best-known spiritual teachers of his time.  His quest led him to pursue rigorous disciplines in ancient India’s tradition of ascetic “sramanas“, yogis who believed in a direct experience of realization through practices like breath retention and mastery… Read more

  • Aimlessness as spiritual path

    Aimlessness as spiritual path?!  We might dismiss such a notion out of hand, until we learned that it was recommended highly by Thich Nhat Hanh, and that he was pointing to a style of practice that is  also signless.  And empty.   Does such an eccentric approach interest us? or make us suspicious?   Using excerpts from a talk by… Read more

  • How do we really make choices?

    Much of our life seems to be consumed with making decisions, important or trivial: What to eat? what to wear? whether to stay in a job or leave it?  whether to stay in a relationship or prepare for an exit?  Coffee or tea?  How to practice, and how much? We might say, and even believe, “I decide” this… Read more