Author: Payton Swick

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 simple.

The Buddha used two different verbs when describing these concepts in his talks. When he mentioned Mindfulness, he used the verb “to see” and when describing Concentration he used the verb “to touch”. This could point to different modes of seeing the world. Mindfulness may have more to do with the mind and Concentration might have more to do with the body.

There are many such contrasts from the ancient teachings and Gil goes through several in his talk.

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:

1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states;
2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen;
3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen;
4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

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 through a lot of meditation that she was able to directly experience what Jane Hirshfield once wrote:

“Everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.”

The discussion touched on many peoples’ personal experiences and challenges coming to formal meditation practice, particularly the paradoxical nature of doing something – and something that’s really hard – without a goal. Meditation seems to work like little drops of water hitting a stone; nothing appears to happen for a long time, but eventually there is a hole and through it we can see our experiences in a new way. As Ren said,

when we sit, we are training the mind, we are not indulging the mind

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 on the way to liberation.

Here are some resources on the Progress of Insight.

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

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 more wide-ranging reflection on Anatta, he talked more about self as the “center of narrative gravity”.

Here is the talk: http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/5730.html

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

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 talks by Ajahn Punnadhammon and Brian Lesage to explore these ideas.

Here are the talks used:

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/484/talk/33029/ (Brian Lessage, The Art of Samadhi)

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/8/talk/32947/ (Ajahn Punnadhammo, What is Samadhi?)

Payton led the discussion this past Sunday on the topic of Freedom: Relief vs. Release. The discussion was centered around a talk by Gil Fronsdal, available here:

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/6816.html

Gil brought up the social/philosophical tensions that exist in all our lives and how perhaps the “middle way” isn’t just choosing a place on that spectrum. Just a few:

• individualism vs. conformity
• discipline vs. allowing
• conservative vs. liberal

He also listed the “four prisons” that trap us in these tensions:

• Religious observances
• Opinions
• Self
• Sensual desire

Gil’s suggestion, near the end of the talk, was just to be “thus”, rather than identifying with any one side or the other.