Archive of Talks

  • Mindfulness vs. Concentration

    This Sunday Mike guided the group through a comparison and contrast of Mindfulness and Concentration. Underlying this topic was a talk given by Gil Fronsdal. The talk is here: http://audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/910.html Gil says: Mindfulness is a clear knowing of what’s going on Concentration is a deep focus on what’s going on …but that’s it’s not quite that… Read more

  • Right Effort and Right Concentration

    This Sunday Rebecca led the discussion reading from Joseph Goldstein’s book, Mindfulness, focusing on Right Effort and Right Concentration as steps of the Eightfold Path. There was quite an exploration of the four classic pieces of Right Effort: to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states; to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen; to… Read more

  • 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