Archive of Talks

  • Christmas Eve Reflections

    Christmas Eve Day Sangha Michael guided our reflections this morning, with a focus on faith or trust, with an aim toward looking into what it is that we trust in ourselves, and what we have learned not to trust. The holidays present us with the apparent demand that we trust in religious faith, or communal… Read more

  • The One

    This Sunday, Rebecca led our reflections, focusing on a text by Swami Ramachakara (William Walker Atkinson) on Gnani Yoga as a way to approach The One. She read from “Gnani Yoga, the Yoga of Wisdom,” Lesson 1, “The One,”. Read more

  • The Power of Empathy

    Joey led our reflections this past Sunday. To understand the four Brahma Viharas–lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity–as embraced within the larger framework of Empathy can give new depth to our understanding, new life to our practice. Here are the talks she played: Brahmaviharas as relational practices by Akincano Marc Weber http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/360/talk/43576/ Practicing with Views and… Read more

  • Contentment

    This Sunday, Payton led the sangha’s exploration of contentment in two parts. The first part was a guided meditation by Rick Hanson, a psychologist and author of several books about contentment. The meditation is on Dharmaseed at the following link. http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/312/talk/12170/ The second part was extracts from a dharma talk by Caroline Jones entitled “The… Read more

  • Pleasure and Enjoyment of Meditation

    Michael guided our discussion November 26 on the topic “Pleasure and Enjoyment in Meditation.” Here are some of the key sources brought together in our discussion. Many meditators treat practice as a duty, and the role of pleasure is ignored. But both canonical texts and contemporary neurological research point out the importance of pleasure in… Read more

  • The Ins and Outs of Practice

    This Sunday, Steve Barry led our Sangha’s discussions. He brought up perspectives on the variety of modes and methods of practice we might engage as our practice evolves. Here is the link to the Dhamma talk by Akincano (Marc Weber) on Dharmaseed: http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/360/talk/28584/ The talk and the discussion focused on modes of practice, i.e. stillness/samadhi… Read more