Archive of Talks

  • Emptiness – Atammayata

    Michael, Margaret, and Sam recently attended an IMS retreat on Emptiness led by Guy Armstrong, Sally Armstrong, Brian LeSage, and Suzie Harrington. This Sunday’s offering was anchored by excerpts from a talk by Suzie Harrington, a teacher new to many of us. The topic was “Atammayata”, or “Not made of that”, a little-discussed concept in… Read more

  • The energy of Viriya

    This Sunday, Mike B led the discussion on the topic of the third Factor of Enlightenment, Viriya, usually translated as “Energy”, “Diligence”, or “Effort”. Here is a talk he played by Joseph Goldstein: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/24770/ The Pali word Viriya means “courageous energy” Some translations: strength, courage, vigor, vitality, perseverance, effort… Joseph suggested we ”put all of… Read more

  • Tea as Meditation

    “If asked / the nature of Chanoyu [tea ceremony] / say it’s the sound / of windblown pines / in a painting.” – Sen Sotan, translated by Dennis Hirota, Wind in the Pines This Sunday Payton replaced our usual Dharma talk with a mindful tea ceremony and spoke about tea as a meditation practice. Language… Read more

  • Impermanence: really knowing change

    This Sunday, Margaret led an excellent discussion on the first “mark of existence”, Impermanence. She played a talk by Joseph Goldstein which emphasized that while it’s easy to say the words and understand them intellectually, our practice is really to find a deep and visceral understanding of the saying, “everything changes”. Here is the talk… Read more

  • Doing one thing at a time

    This Sunday, Payton led a discussion on the simple, yet challenging prospect of doing just one thing at a time in our daily lives. The topic was spurred by this talk by Gil Fronsdal http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/7613.html “It it’s not simple, it’s not Vipassana” – Munindra-Ji Read more

  • Natural History and Mindfulness

    This Sunday, Mike B. led our discussion this past Sunday on the topic of Natural History and its intersection with Buddhist philosophy. Mike played an excerpt from Gil Fronsdal’s talk here: http://audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/4361.html. He also read a poignant selection from one of the essays in The Way of Natural History by Thomas Fleischner. Here are some… Read more