Archive of Talks

  • Why do we Meditate?

    Today Payton led a discussion on the rather complicated topic of “Why do we meditate?” after playing a talk given by Ren Bunce, which is available here: http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/3093.html Ren spoke about her personal experience coming to practice, starting with Alcoholics Anonymous. She heard the teaching to love everyone, but was confused about “How?”. It was only… Read more

  • The Progress of Insight

    This past Sunday, Zac guided our reflection using the Progress of Insight framework. This “map of the journey” comes to us from various traditional Theravada Buddhist commentary texts, most notably Buddhagosa’s Visuddhimagga (430 CE). This framework outlines insights, stages, and particular challenges that a practitioner of vipassanā (“insight”, “clear-seeing”) meditation is said to pass through… Read more

  • Generosity

    This Sunday Joey led our reflections, focusing on Generosity, which is considered the cornerstone of all Buddhist training in the East: without this, nothing. Joey utilized a talk by Gil Fronsdal, available here: http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/6798.html Read more

  • Non-self and a center of Narrative Gravity

    Inspired by the notion of self as the  “center of narrative gravity” that arose in the talk by Matthew Brensilver presented by Payton the previous Sunday, this Sunday we revisited the notion of Anatta, or “no-self” in Buddhism.    Margaret led the discussion using another talk by Matthew Brensilver in which, as part of a… Read more

  • Thinking

    This past Sunday Payton guided the discussion around the thinking mind. To quote Matthew Brensilver, whose talk we heard: I think, therefore I am slightly ashamed The talk touched on the most common misconception about meditation: that we should somehow be banishing thought. The talk is here: http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/6448.html Read more

  • Samadhi

    This past Sunday, Margaret revisited the idea of Samadhi, and its role in Buddhist practice. Although Samadhi is often simply translated as concentration, this perhaps does not fully capture the notion. With no intention of exploring Samadhi in the context of Jhanas, we reflected on the role of pleasure in Samadhi. She used excerpts from… Read more