Category: Uncategorized

This Sunday, Payton guided the Sangha discussion. We continued the theme of noticing the space between our experience and our reaction, by trying to become more aware of Vedana, or the Feeling Tone (pleasant, unpleasant, or neither) that happens just as our senses make contact with the world. More specifically, we discussed trying to feel the sensation of being pulled toward or pushed away from those experiences as they occur, and how reacting with that movement can define our whole life.

Payton played a talk by Christina Feldman from a recent retreat at IMS. The talk is not publicly available, but here is a link to the other talks from that retreat:

http://dharmaseed.org/retreats/3153

Here’s Payton’s notes from the discussion.

“Vedana” – Feeling tone or Hedonic tone, not emotion, exquisitely simple.

Vedana is mostly not implicitly pleasant or unpleasant, but is generally neutral and is then colored by our context.

Often what we react to is not the experiences that we have, but the thoughts that follow those experiences.

What we feel, we move toward, away from, or we stand confused.

If we are mindful, automatic patterns of behavior become optional.

Vedana begins with contact; generally they arise together; just notice pleasant as pleasant, unpleasant as unpleasant; this is a practice for our daily life.

Neutral Vedana can be invisible; it causes us to go looking for something pleasant, or looking for something unpleasant to fix; “when we don’t pay attention to the neutral, it becomes unpleasant”.

Vedana in this context is the Second Foundation of Mindfulness. The first is the body, and it is essential to notice these experiences happening in the body. The third is our Mind State (“Citta“), which we could describe as our mood. Often the Mind State colors our experience of the Vedana, because pleasant Vedana can become neutral in the environment of unpleasant Citta. Similarly, unpleasant Vedana can be ignored or softened when perceived during pleasant Citta.

Mind states are also created by repeated exposure to Vedana, so lots of unpleasant Feeling tone experiences can lead to unpleasant Mind states, which in turn color our subsequent Feeling tones. This cycle can repeat endlessly.

We hear buzzing around our head and we’re swatting at the mosquito before we even know that we’ve moved our hand. Then when someone asks why we’re swatting the air, we say, “I was annoyed by the mosquito”, but in fact we’ve just made up that story to explain our actions.

This past Sunday, Margaret led our Sangha discussion on the topics of volition (intention),  the underlying motivations for intentions, and how kharma is related to those underlying motivations.

We based this discussion on:

1. The first 8 and a half minutes of a talk by Joseph Goldstein: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/24781/
2. A reading from the section “The factor of volition”, from Joseph Goldstein’s book, “Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening (pp. 186-187)
3. The first 11 minutes of a talk by Shaila Catherine: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/163/talk/19181/ (The rest of this talk is also thought provoking.)

We had a very interesting discussion based on this.

Here are a couple of quotes from the reading from Joseph Goldstein’s book:

“What makes volition … so important in the understanding of our lives … is that it carries the karmic force of the action. What this means is that all intentional, volitional actions, whether of body, speech, or mind, have the power to bring about results both in the present and future.”

“Intention itself is ethically neutral. It is the motivation associated with the intention behind an action that determines the particular karmic fruit of the action, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Although there can be many different motives underlying our actions, they can all be traced back to one of three wholesome or unwholesome roots; the wholesome ones are nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion, and the unwholesome ones are greed, hatred and delusion.”

Payton led a very lively discussion this Sunday on what choices we have around the moment between stimulus and response. Specifically, the chain of experiences as described by Christina Feldman:

What we contact, we feel [this is Vedana or Feeling Tone].
What we feel, we perceive.
What we perceive, we think about.
What we think about, we dwell upon.
What we dwell upon becomes the shape of our mind.
The shape of our mind becomes the shape of our world.

Christina suggests an alternate chain of events:

What we contact, we feel [this is Vedana or Feeling Tone].
What we feel, we perceive.
What we perceive, we can reflect upon.
What we reflect upon, we can find an appropriate response to.

The ground for this discussion was a rich talk by Christina Feldman from a recent retreat at IMS. The talk is here:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/44/talk/43791/

This past Sunday Zac led our discussion on the topic of Right (or “Wise”) View.

He played excerpts from two talks:

Lama Surya Das 2012-01-17 32:07
Right View
Insight Meditation South Bay – Silicon Valley: Tuesday Talks—2012
http://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/283/22760.html

Rob Burbea 2006-12-31 56:58
Views In Practice (…They make all the difference)
Gaia House: New Year’s Retreat
http://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/210/12308.html

This Sunday, Rebecca led our gathering by reading the transcript of a talk given by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Trungpa Rinpoche describes a “Fourth Moment” beyond what we consider the three concepts of relative time: past, present, and future. He describes this moment as “now-ness”, a sense of complete awareness of the ever-changing nature of reality all around us, and one which can be understood though Viapassana practice.

The transcript is available from Lion’s Roar here:

https://www.lionsroar.com/beyond-present-past-and-future-is-the-fourth-moment/

The theme of today’s Sangha was the five aggregates – with emphasis on their relevance in the context of right view. To aid this discussion, Margaret used excerpts from two talks, listed below.

Joseph Goldstein:

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/27189/

And Ayya Santacitta:

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/278/talk/25971/

Margaret also referenced an excerpt from John Burdett’s Bangkok Tattoo, which we’ve seen at Sangha before:

Patrick guided our reflections this Sunday on the topic of Right (or Wise) Speech and Wrong (or Unwise) Speech, and insights into the inner and outer effects of each. The discussion was anchored with excerpts from a talk by Shalia Catherine.

From Dharmaseed:

Speech is given particular importance in the Buddhist path because wrong speech can be the cause of tremendous harm, and right speech can be profoundly beneficial. The practice of right speech is given emphasis because it’s a very vivid way that we can bring our practice off the cushion and into our daily life. When our life is conditioned on delusion and greed, our intention usually is to benefit ourselves. While when our life is conditioned on delusion and hatred, our intention is usually to harm others. Even when we choose to lie because it will cause less harm than the truth, we still should be aware of the karmic consequence of our action.

The talk is here:

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/163/talk/37813/

This Sunday, Sam guided our reflections, continuing with the theme of Emptiness from last week, which lies at the root of so much Buddhist practice.

Excerpts from talks by Sally and Guy Armstrong, as well as a guided meditation led by Guy anchored the presentation.

The talks were from the recent retreat “Emptiness” at IMS. We are currently unable to provide links to the talks which Sam played specifically, but here’s a list of the publicly available talks from that retreat: http://dharmaseed.org/retreats/3150

Michael, Margaret, and Sam recently attended an IMS retreat on Emptiness led by Guy Armstrong, Sally Armstrong, Brian LeSage, and Suzie Harrington. This Sunday’s offering was anchored by excerpts from a talk by Suzie Harrington, a teacher new to many of us. The topic was “Atammayata”, or “Not made of that”, a little-discussed concept in Buddhist literature which is actually very core to the Buddha’s teachings.

Here is Suzie’s talk:

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/396/talk/41557/

This Sunday, Mike B led the discussion on the topic of the third Factor of Enlightenment, Viriya, usually translated as “Energy”, “Diligence”, or “Effort”.

Here is a talk he played by Joseph Goldstein:

http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/24770/

The Pali word Viriya means “courageous energy”

Some translations: strength, courage, vigor, vitality, perseverance, effort… Joseph suggested we ”put all of these meanings together”.

Basic translation: energy, the capacity to be engaged, to do things, to accomplish things.

Buddha said: “When we practice, wisdom grows. When we don’t practice, wisdom wanes.”

Joseph says: “Wisdom is not something that we get, and then we have….if wisdom is not cultivated through practice, it becomes a memory, and it’s not particularly alive within us.”

When wisdom is not alive for us, it is easy for old habit patterns to reemerge.

“Beginless habit energies are extremely difficult to remove suddenly. Hindrances are formidable, and habits are deeply ingrained.” – Chinul, founder of Korean tradition of Zen

“It is not difficult to be aware of mindful, it is difficult to maintain it continuously. For this you need right effort, which is simply perseverance.” – Joseph