Archive of Talks

  • Personal Transformation / Social Transformation

    Jeffrey guided our reflections this Sunday. We continued investigating the issue of social transformation from a Buddhist perspective that has threaded through many of our meetings. Most recently, Brit hosted a meeting April 1st about angel Kyodo Williams’ conception of “engaged buddhism” that Williams calls “Radical Dharma”. Lorilee followed April 8 with another talk on… Read more

  • Omnipresent Life

    This past Sunday, Rebecca guided our reflections with readings from Yogi Ramcharaka, on the topic “Omnipresent Life.” The reading was chapter 2 of Yogi Ramacharaka’s book “Gnani Yoga, the Yoga of Wisdom.” Read more

  • The Religion of “Me”

    This past week, Michael led our Sangha in an exploration of the ever-present idea of “self” and all the identifications and attachments that entails. In particular, he looked at traditional Buddhist concepts and how they have evolved in our modern world. To make the Dharma up-to-date and relevant to our lives, we may set aside… Read more

  • Engaged Buddhism

    Building on last week’s exploration of Engaged Buddhism, this week Lorilee offered a talk by one of the world’s best known teachers in this practice: Thich Nat Han. In a talk given at Plum Village on the last day of 2008, “Thay” as he is often called by his followers, presents “The World We Are”,… Read more

  • Radical Acceptance and our Engagement with the World

    Britt guided our reflections this Sunday, focusing on questions around radical acceptance and engaged Buddhism — examining where the collective efforts towards the liberation of all beings lies in our individual practice and what we have to give up in order to get there. She played a wonderful talk by Reverend angel Kyodo Williams, which… Read more

  • The truth about what we experience

    Today, Zac led our reflections on the teaching of the Three Characteristics or three marks of existence. The phrase to “see things as they really are,” itself a fascinating and potentially problematic term, refers to experiencing reality through the lens of the three characteristics. An important tenet of the dharma is that learning to see… Read more