Vegan. Digital craftsman. Tea explorer. Avid learner of things. Writes code @automattic.
Rebecca guided a fascinating conversation today on the oft-misunderstood topic of Renunciation as an element of the Eightfold path.
Rebecca read passages from Joseph Goldstein’s book, Mindfulness: a Practical guide to Awakening.
This Sunday Wendy guided the sangha through a continuation of our recent discussions of “stream entry” from the Buddhist perspective. A recorded talk by Stephen Bachelor was included and is linked below:
http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/169/talk/29153/
This Sunday Zac prompted our reflection and dialogue with the story of the Four Divine Messengers. The tale holds truths about initiatory experiences, setting forth on the path, catalysts for transformation, and reveals a particular archetype of the spiritual path. The talk and discussion focused on the divine messengers in our lives today.
Joey guided our reflections this past Sunday as we focused on Wise Speech, drawing from several sources including Joseph Goldstein and Gregory Kramer.
Here is the talk by Joseph Goldstein:
Payton led the discussion centered around the idea of Papancha, or Mental Proliferation. The seminal sutta on this topic is the “Honeyball Sutta”, where it’s explained as: first there is the coming together of three things, an object, a sensory organ, and consciousness. The meeting of these three is “contact”. Contact leads to feeling tone (Vedana), which leads to perception (naming), which leads to thinking about, which then leads to Mental Proliferation.
We listened to a talk by James Baraz entitled “The Honeyball Sutta: The Source of Our Confusion and the Way Out”.
Payton guided the discussion this morning on the concept of Doubt in our practice. Typically Doubt is expressed as one of the Hinderances, but in a talk by Tony Bernhard we heard that doubting is only natural, and perhaps more important is our understanding of what we decide to believe.
To listen to Tony’s talk, follow this link to Dharma Seed: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/182/talk/24678/
Wendy played an insightful talk by Adrianne Ross highlighting many ways that we can find Joy in our meditation, even through persistent pain, struggle, or grief. Adrianne’s talk is here: http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/4875.html
Our sitting and discussion was followed by a guided meditation by Than. Bhikkhu that can be found on this site under “Rapture” in “Factors of Awakening”:
http://www.dhammatalks.org/mp3_collections_index.html#strengths
Payton led this the discussion this past Sunday on the topic of Anxiety, based around a talk by Matthew Brensilver.
http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/496/talk/24441/
Some other good talks on the topic include a talk by Donald Rothberg and one by Michael Grady.
