Archive of Talks

  • Seeking and Finding Refuge in Today’s Dharma

    Refuge is a central concept in the path of liberation. Today Zac focused on the experience of refuge through personal experience and an exploration of teachings. The talk we listened to was an excerpt from an audio book called “Truly Seeing” by Thich Nhat Hanh. Here’s a link to the audio book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Truly-Seeing-Thich-Nhat-Hanh/dp/1888375396. The five… Read more

  • Sustainable Compassion and Wisdom Training

    Jack Kornfield, founder of Spirit Rock meditation center and one of the principal bringers of vipassana meditation to the west, once found himself having to explain, at length, to the Dalai Lama how it could be that, in the West, an individual could not like himself, could find herself unworthy of others’ love, or could… Read more

  • Re-discovering the power of the sitting posture

    Today we have available a wide range of sitting meditation practices. Although what each practice emphasizes may vary, they usually begin with the instruction to take one’s seat and assume one’s meditation posture:  we begin by tuning into our bodies. This past Sunday, Denise guided our practice, taking us deeper than we may be accustomed… Read more

  • Being fully here in the presence of racism

    This Sunday’s sangha continued our dialog on the important theme of race which has been a deep topic of the past few weeks. Jeff H shared a recent talk by Tara Brach titled “A Courageous Presence with Racism.” Jeff says, The topic is important to me. I have black family members and coworkers about whom I… Read more

  • Looking at the Unseen: Whiteness as Maya, the Veil of Illusion

    Jeffrey followed Mike B.’s presentation of Reverend angel Kyodo williams’ talk on the theme of Practice, Justice, and Social Change with a continued focus on racial justice and the experience of being white. We watched the video Color of Fear, in which a multi-racial group of men confront a white man’s blindness to his own… Read more

  • Practice, Justice, and Social Change

    The minds and hearts of most people these days are filled with feelings and ideas about how we can find our way to a more just society. Yet trying to deal with the problems themselves is often quite difficult, unless we have a deeper source of wisdom to draw upon than those that are circulating in… Read more