Burlington Buddhist Sangha

Sam brought a talk by John Peacock on anatta, often translated non-self, which cast a backward glance toward the five aggregates, exploring how none of them constitute a self, and how clinging to identification with any of them leads to distress.  Peackock’s talk, given on July 6, 2011, is the second of three relating to Papanca, random mental proliferations, and is titled “Papanca Part Two:  The Tyranny of the Self,” and can be found on dharmaseed.com.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/91/talk/13519/

The third of his talks will be our subject for next Sunday.

Our day-long retreat was structured around experiencing the five aggregates, and included yoga and sensory awareness, as well as two reflections/meditations on the aggregates

Pascal Auclair    Morning Instructions – Five Aggregates       2012 – 01/04

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/198/

and  Myoshin Kelley  Guided Meditation on the Five Aggregates   2007 – 10/12

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/130/?page=7

Information about the practice of Sensory Awareness can be found at

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The recorded talk today was by Guy Armstrong entitled Patterns of Becoming 2: The Five Aggregates

Here’s a link to the recording on Dharmaseed: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/79/talk/15469/

Wendy offered a presentation on Metta this morning, which included portions of these recorded dharma talks:

John Teasdale
The Significance of Kindness and Care
http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/238/talk/12371/

Adrianne Ross
Guided Loving Kindness Meditation
http://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/3/8168.html

Joey led us in reflecting on the third of the Brhama Viharas, Sympathetic Joy, by sharing a talk from Christina Feldman, which Joey heard on a recent retreat.  Though that talk is not available online, here is a link to another of Christina’s talks, simply titled “Joy,” from November 19, 2009, which covers the same ground and offers the same encouragements.

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/44/talk/10583/

Anne directed our reflections on Compassion, the second of the Brahma Viharas, with a portion of a talk by Sally Armstrong

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/153/talk/13479/

and guided our meditation, reading from Jack Kornfield’s book Wise Heart, pages 33-34.

Jackie brought our focus to the fourth Brahma Vihara, Equanimity, centering on a talk titled “Equanimity – Meeting in the Middle, by Joseph Goldstein, from April 2012, at the Forest Refuge.

http://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/96/15863.html

As with all the Brahma Viharas, the meditative practice which fosters equanimity often makes use of the heartfelt iteration of traditional phrases.  Here are phrases for the cultivation of equanimity, should you wish to explore them.

To explore further dimensions of concentration, Michael used a part of a talk by Joseph Goldstein as well as extracts from Henapola Gunaratana’s book on the jhanas, “Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English.”  Joseph’s talk is one of a series of 46 that he gave over the years, methodically going through the Satipatthana Sutta, the basic text on mindfulness (all of which can be found at <dharmaseed.org>.  We listened to minutes 14:26 – 44:37.

Concentration II – from Factors of Awakening, Joseph Goldstein

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/3552/

Joey brought ou focus to concentration this week with and excerpt from a talk by Guy Armstrong, who has a number of talks on concentration available at <dharmaseed.org>.

Awakening concentration – Guy Armstrong

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/79/talk/2434/

Nancy focused our practice with a guided meditation on “Big Mind”.  Joseph Goldstein once described this as a meditation with a Tibetan Buddhist style, a Zen name, developed and most often taught by Vipassana teachers.    There are many versions by many teachers available to stream or download at <dharmaseed.org>

Here is the link to one by Joseph.  Click the title or paste in the link below

Big mind

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/4213/