Archive of Talks

This past Sunday, Zac guided our explorations of the fundamentals of practice that we can return to as a sources of wisdom, guidance, and resilience in the many conditions we find ourselves in. Here are the three talks of which Zac played excerpts: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/210/13850.html https://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/96/43807.html Read more

This week we had a more active Sangha. Sojun guided us to practice an connection and awareness exercise derived from the Clowning tradition and viewed through the lens of Zen. We explored what it was like to fail and what that failure meant, and then how it felt to be held in community even in… Read more

This week, Joey led our Sangha on the topic of mindful communication, using different strategies and practices to improve our interaction with the world. She played excerpts from three talks, available from the links below. Will Johnson, The Posture of Meditation; Breathing through the Whole Body: The Buddha’s Instructions on Integrating Mind, Body and Breath… Read more

The challenge with difficult emotions is that we don’t want to feel them. During this week’s Sangha, Payton guided the discussion around how we experience and relate to strong emotions like grief, deep sadness, anger, and fear. Buddhism is often characterized as a way to become healed from difficult emotional states, yet perhaps some difficult… Read more

Entanglement, or knotted-ness, is a metaphor often used in the consideration of dependent origination. This week, Sam led our Sangha discussion following excerpts from talks on this topic by Sharon Salzberg and Christina Feldman. Here is the full talk “Happiness And Mindfulness” by Christina Feldman (1995): https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/44/talk/10142/ Here is the talk “Disentangling” by Sharon Salzberg… Read more

Most of us were introduced to meditation through paying attention to breath, sounds, or sensations, as ways to calm our unruly minds.  While these provide an excellent point of departure, even the early Buddhist teachings recommend that as we gain a foothold in meditation, we learn how to extend and augment our practice, both deepening… Read more