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.
Michael guided our reflections today with a talk on Stream Entry, the first definitive stage of Awakening, after which there is really no turning back.
A variety of canonical readings on Stream Entry can be found at
The story of Siddhartha’s bowl floating upstream can be found in
The Buddhacarita or Acts of the Buddha, Asvaghosa,
available on line at
http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Texts-and-Translations/Buddhacarita/
and in
The Hungry Tigress, Buddhist Legends and Jataka Tales, Rafe Martin, (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1990)
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”.
Zac guided us through multiple avenues of reflection on vedana or the feeling tone of our experiences…pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Recognizing these dispositions as they arise and breaking off the automatic clinging or rejecting or ignoring can help us step out of a downward spiral.
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/
