Burlington Buddhist Sangha

Wendy directed our attention to Joy, the third of the Brahma Viharas, and used a quite joyful talk by Jack Kornfield titled “Joy and its Causes” from Nov 15 2010 to set up the discussion, a talk you can find by going to

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/85/talk/10886/

Payton Swick guided our reflections on The Stories We Tell Ourselves, and how those shape our entire life experience, using excerpts from a talk by Robina Courtin, which can be found at

http://www.zencast.org/zencast_117_bodhicitta

good follow-up article can be found at

http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/on-practice/calling-bs-on-the-minds-stories

Rebecca tuided our reflections, using material from Donald Rothberg,  “Self and Not Self, The Core Teachings of the Buddha”

You can access a dharma talk on this topic by Rothberg at

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/55/talk/16969/

And he also offers a 20+minute guided meditation on the Self and Non-Self at

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/55/talk/16968/

Sam guided our reflections today, using a recent retreat talk (July 20) by Christina Feldman, on Effort and Effortlessness, which you can listen to or review at

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/44/talk/16810/

Margaret guided our reflections this week, using parts of a July 16 talk by Christina Feldman on “Joy.”  That talk can be found at

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/44/talk/16723/

Michael turned the group’s attention to the question of questioning itself – the questions we are constantly asking ourselves, for better or worse – initiating the discussion with the first 15 minutes of Gil Fronsdal’s talk on “The Inquiring Mind.”  Our own discusion took it from there, but if you’d like to hear what Gil’s sangha had to say about the questions they carried, there’s another half hour on this recording of Gil’s talk from July 9, 2012.

http://www.audiodharma.org/teacher/1/talk/3139/venue/IMC/20120709-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-the_inquiring_mind.mp3

In addition to leading us in half an hour of yoga on the deck before sitting, Nancy focused our attention on the question of equanimity and faith, using a talk of that title by Sharon Salzberg from January 13, 2010.

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/165/talk/8052/

On July 8, Joey focused our attention on the quality of confidence in our practice, utilizing a dharma talk by Tara Brach titled “The Lion’s Roar” from May 2012.

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/175/talk/16418/

Today, Anne focuses our attention on the relation between the sense of having time, and the arising of the attitude of kindness.  Gil Fronsdal’s talk is titled “The Paramis:  Patience” and can be found at

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/2285.html

This Sunday, Michael played portions of a talk by John Peacock, on Papanca, the tendency  of the mind to proliferate apparently random thoughts, and the practice of Metta meditation, and ways in which that might serve to tame the very basis of Papanca.

The complete talk is titled Papanca Part Three:  The Brahma Viharas, was delivered on Muly 8 2011, and can be found at

http://dharmaseed.org/talks/?search=papanca&sort=-rec_date

The Metta Sutta, which John quoted and entered into our discussion can be found at

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.08.than.html