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This Sunday Mike B. led our Sangha discussion and played a talk and guided meditation by Pascal Auclair. The topic was on the changing nature of the self, experience, and memory. A feeling, thought, or self-image can seem so real and permanent in the moment, but then the next moment (or many moments later) it reveals itself to have been nothing at all. We explored the Buddha’s metaphor of experience as the foam of bubbles in a stream and how it was reflected in our own lives.

You can listen to Pascal’s talk here:

https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/198/talk/51978/

The Dhamma draws each of us for a variety of reasons and as we commit ourselves to practice, our intentions and experiences change and develop over the course of our lives. This Sunday Andrea guided our reflections drawing on a talk given by Anusjka Ferandopoulle via Cambridge Insight entitled “Refreshing the Heart, Living with Wisdom.” where we were presented with quite a list of varied motivations and experiences of Dhamma that can be part of our practice from “mental fitness” to “devotion” to “not knowing” each of which is a valid and useful stepping stone in our path.

You can listen to the talk here:

https://cimc.dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/222/61823.html

Our sangha continued its master class this Sunday on how to respond to challenges in our lives and in our world. Lorilee offered a lecture by Ajahn Sucitto, delivered during winter retreat this January, which took us into the subtle, deep layers of how our sankhara or mental conditioning is created, and how as yogis and buddhist practitioners we can understand, slow down, and deconstruct this habitual process. Developing this skill allows us to choose a different response. This is activism at its roots.

You can listen to Ajahn Sucitto’s talk here:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/9/63592.html

Lorilee also played an excerpt of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Nobel peace prize acceptance speech, which you can watch here:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/acceptance-speech/

Continuing a particular thread of our exploration from last week, Sam guided our reflections this Sunday on Intimacy and Vulnerability, drawing on the teachings of Ajahn Sucitto, Christina Feldman, and Pamela Weiss. As we open to experience our lives more fully, we become both more intimate and more vulnerable, and can use a path of wisdom that helps us negotiate this terrain.

Here are links to the three talks:

Dhamma Stream Online Puja:  The Gift of Vulnerability, 5-3-20,  Ajahn Sucitto https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/9/talk/61685/

Dukkha and Vulnerability,   9-24-17,   Christina Feldman https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/44/talk/47553/

Listening With Love, 3-23-19,  Pamela Weiss https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/231/talk/55409/

Although Investigation is known as the Second Factor of Awakening (after Mindfulness), it is often overlooked in practice as our meditative lives unfold.  Drawing on Early Buddhism, Zen, Advaita, and related traditions, Michael guided our reflections and experiments in Meditative Inquiry this Sunday,  as we explored ways to investigate our sense of what counts most for us in appreciating and shaping our lives.

Specifically, we took part in a small group exercise where we repeatedly asked one another some variation of the question, “what do you want from your practice?”. After some exploration in which we determined that much of what we want seems to be rooted in the present moment, we then asked, “what is getting in the way of having that right now?”.

At a time of the year when many take stock and reassess, it helps to have some reliable principles to base our thinking on. An end-of-retreat talk by Akincino offers a thought-provoking context for looking at one’s life afresh. Don guided our reflections this Sunday, drawing on Akincino and our own insights to see what values are guiding us, and why.

The talk is available here: https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/360/talk/33191/

Bobby guided our reflections this week, exploring how compassion and wisdom need one another for balance in an awakened life. Aided by excerpts from a talk by Jill Shepherd which investigates not only compassion, but all four Brahma Viharas, we can locate the sought-for balance as an expression of the middle way.

You can listen to the talk here:

https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/637/talk/62442/

This Sunday, Jeffrey J presented a talk by Thanissaro Bhikkhu on “The Present Moment is not the goal”. 

Karma shapes the present moment, provides the raw material for choices of how to be in the present moment, what to do. What you do in Present Moment influences your experience of it, and future action, says Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Present actions make the difference between if past bad actions lead to a lot of suffering right now, or a little. We have freedom in the present to act. We act in the present moment, it is not a static goal, but an active one.

Meditation is to learn to observe the mind in the present moment. So as to let go of unskillful elements like panic, and to develop skillful ones, liking assessing what is available and thinking clearly. 

Jeffrey revised and extended the Buddha’s Parable of the Raft to illustrate Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s interpretation.

A person is passing thru dangerous territory, there are bandits about. She gets to a river t she cannot swim across and there are no boats. She first panics, then calms herself. She looks around and decides there are enough logs, branches, grass, whatever, for her to build a raft. It is leaky and weak, but it works. She paddles across, and leaves the raft, walks away from the river. Shortly, she finds another river. Stronger. From what she learned the first time, she can build a stronger raft. Off she goes. Same process. River after river. But she gets better and better at building rafts and getting across. The rivers may slow the bandits behind her, but they are still coming.  The land is the Present Moment, it holds the raw materials from past actions, from which she fabricates, constructs a new raft to get across to the next Present Moment. It never ends. The Present Moment is just a construction site to build the next more skillful actions. The bandits are her motivation, that is, her continuous contemplation of death.  That is what Buddha said is necessary to continue to recognize and reduce suffering.

We discussed what the river stood for and there were many ideas: Ignorance, the Hindrances, doubt, and more. 

The dharma talk: The Karma of Now

Readings:

The Karma of Now: Why the present moment isn’t the goal by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

More on Karma: The Buddha’s Baggage: Everything you wanted to know about karma but were afraid to ask– Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Youtube video on same topic by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

We seem to have become a species lost in thought and fueled by unskillful exterior influence.  We may have little control over the events of our lives… but we do have some capacity to be at peace – depending on our relationship with what we experience.  

This Sunday we explored “Freedom of Awareness” with Mark Coleman, who describes how ‘being the knowing’ allows us to be at ease with what is happening around us.  This style of relating to our experience allows us to see our patterns of reactivity and delusion.  The more we take refuge in awareness, the more likely we are to be at peace.

Evelien facilitated a discussion aimed to turn the lens from the object of our thoughts to the awareness of being aware, the knowing of seeing.  

“Awareness is the foundation of kindness; kindness is the expression of awareness.  When we’re really present to something, we often find we’re in connection with it, we appreciate it.”    

6th Zen Patriarch

You can listen to the talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/115/talk/62080/

Having conquered all temptations, Siddhartha touched the ground with one hand and asked the Earth to be witness to his awakening. ~ The Buddha was born under a tree, first meditated under a tree, became enlightened under a tree, and died under a tree. His relationship with nature was profound and intimate, and guided him on his journey toward enlightenment. Yet vipassana’s teachings contain precious little instruction on how we, like Siddhartha, might derive true insight through deep attention to the plants, animals and streams in nature.

There is an urgent need today to highlight aspects of Buddhist teachings that guide our actions in support of planetary wholeness, and to develop practices that deepen our own connection to that wholeness.   

For Thanksgiving Sunday’s session, Lorilee featured teachings by Micah Mortali from Kripalu Center, leading into a nature meditation. Lorilee also read aloud ecologist Matthew Zylstra’s comments on “What Vipassana Forgot”, regarding some potential missing pieces regarding teachings about nature. Finally, we heard a teaching on Sila, or right conduct by Ajahn Succito (linked below), which highlights the need for a great focus on nature from a Buddhist perspective.

You can watch Ajahn Succito’s talk here: