Archive of Talks

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

Today Mike B. led our Sangha by playing a talk on the topic of Upadana, or “clinging” by Akincino. Here is a link to the talk: https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/360/talk/54064/  The focus on Upadana starts at about 21 min.   Below are some notes Mike created while listening to the talk (spelling of Pali words is almost certainly incorrect in… Read more

This past Sunday, Britt led our Sangha discussion using her recent long retreat as a basis for sharing some wisdom on tension in the body and mind. She played a guided meditation by Rodney Smith entitled “Tensionless Sitting”, which is available here: https://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/148/talk/53726/ Read more