Archive of Talks

In all that we do or say or experience – what becomes our Karma, and what simply passes by and drops away?  Are there behaviors we can’t help enacting? What does the voice in our head repeat and repeat?  Is there a way precisely that irksome repetition can become the raw material for transforming our own lives?   Sometimes met Read more

What is the opposite of freedom?  Exploring this question leads to insights into the 2nd noble truth regarding craving.  Are craving and desire the same?  If not, how to tell the difference?  How exactly do we let go of craving as the Buddha instructs?  Is the path just a grim struggle until nirvana, or can Read more

Each day the world’s news offers us new provocations to distress. Relentlessly.   It’s so easy to be knocked off balance, and sometimes hard to find our way back. A kind of fixed rigidity can tempt us, as can the conviction that we could fix the situation, if only the world would listen. But these are paths that lead Read more

Being in nature seems always, since our beginnings, to have been profoundly relaxing and regenerating.  When we look into this, do wefeel we are spectators, standing just outside nature, looking at it?  Or are we an aspect of nature, aware of itself?   And what about the experience of the body? Am I located in my head, aware Read more

When was the last time you listened to the sound of the wind in the trees? How about watching the gentle movements of a leaf or a pine needle? When our senses meet an experience, a complex chain of events occurs nearly instantly including the “feeling tone” of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral and leading all Read more

To begin to practice the dharma is a huge, significant step – and some of us can date the time of our beginning.  What we don’t usually mark with anniversaries is the ways in which we discover to deepen and strengthen our practice, though this is what keeps us going year after year, and what  truly transforms Read more