Buddhist Virtues

1) In the spiritual journey we experience the same personal transformation that the Buddha himself experienced; 2) What is suffering?; 3) Learning to embrace negative emotions; 4) Becoming friends with our own minds; 5) Equanimity is the highest virtue; 6) We are often pawns of circumstances we don’t comprehend much less understand; 7) The ten paramis; 8) Becoming aware of self-deceit; 9) Attaining spiritual grace through the practice of mindfulness.

Recorded January 26, 2013

1) The foundation of virtue is nonharming; 2) Ethics is based on the tension between self and other; 3) The concept of generosity or dana; 4) Are you emotionally generous or selfish? 5) Why generosity leads to wealth and stinginess to poverty; 6) The view of biology: the selfish gene; 7) The view of evolutionary psychology.

Recorded February 2, 2013

1) Basic assumption of nonself; 2) Examples to highlight difference between communal vs. individual-based world views; 3) Relationship of self to others is a reflection of historical trends; 4) Gemeinshaft and Gesellshaft; 5) Original sin vs. original purity; 6) Buddhist ethics is enshrined in eightfold noble path and Bodhisattva model of moral purity.

Recorded February 9, 2013

1) Sila or Buddhist morality which is based on nonharming; 2) the Buddhist precepts; 3) Not about following rules, it’s about purifying yourself; 4) We’re renouncing attachments to pleasure, not pleasure itself; 5) Letting of of attachments by knowing impermanence.

February 16, 2013

1) Structure of presentation: definition of wisdom, kinds of wisdom, and relationship of meditation to the development of wisdom; 2) Wisdom defined as content, or doctrinal wisdom, and wisdom as process, or the process of attaining wisdom; 2) Wisdom as the Buddhist teachings: The Four Noble Truths; impermanence, suffering and no-self; greed, hatred, and delusion; and dependent origination, or karma; 3) Wisdom as process: the difference between conceptual knowledge and experience based awareness.

Recorded February 23, 2013

1) The two kinds of Wisdom: Wisdom at the conventional level, and Wisdom at the unconditioned level; 2) Wisdom at the conventional level: the law of cause and effect or Karma; 3) Wisdom at the unconditioned level: The Four Noble Truths, ignorance, and the concept of Anatta; 4) Approaching the concept of wisdom through an understanding of Conditionality; 5) The neuroscience view of non-self: mapping, memory, and proprioception; 6) How does this contribute to our understanding of ego and suffering; and 7) What is the deathless in the Buddha’s teaching?

Recorded March 3, 2013

1) Holding on to memories at the end of life; 2) The conditioning process and the formation of the sense of self or ego; 3) The neural mechanics of “selfing”: mapping, memory, and proprioception; 4) The location of the ego or self in the mind and the location of our physical reality in the body; 5) The ongoing tension between the mind and the body; 6) The difference between a thought and an emotion; 7) If there is no self, then there is no one who is dying…that is the deathless.

Recorded March 9, 2013

1) The definition of wisdom; 2) What is suffering? 3) What is the Ego? 4) How does meditation effect the transition in spiritual awareness; 5) Addressing the relationship between the mind and the body; 6} What is a thought and what is an emotion? 7) “Decontextualising” an emotion. 8) Understanding the relationship between a thought and a feeling; 8) Forms of insight resulting from meditation.

Recorded March 23, 2013

1) Introduction to Webu Sayadaw; 2) The meaning of the core Buddhist teachings; 3) The relationship between morality, concentration, and wisdom; 4) Understanding impermanence, suffering, and non-self; 5) The meaning of the meditation process in terms of mind and body; 6) The illusion of past and future; 7) Knowing the meaning of mind and body, Nama Rupa.

Recorded March 30, 2013

1) The four enabling factors: 2) The definition of energy or virya; 3) The definition of patience; 4) Patience and the attainment of Enlightenment.

Recorded April 6, 2013

1) The four enabling qualities; 2) The virtue of truthfulness; 3) The Four Noble Truths; 4) The process of being truthful; 5) The duality of two truths: absolute and conventional reality; 6) The role of meditation in seeing the truth of our lives

Recorded April 13, 2013

1) The concept of Bodhicitta; 2) The Boston event; 3) The balance between the mind and the body: conventional and absolute reality; 4) Moving from conceptual understanding to embodied wisdom; 5) Personal reflection on suffering.

Recorded April 20, 2013

1) The concept of conventional and absolute reality; 2) The esoteric teachings and the exoteric teachings; 3) The Two Truth Doctrine; 4) The myth of Adam and Eve; 5) Ajahn Chah on absolute and conventional reality.

Recorded April 27, 2013

1) Defining and living a life that is sacred; 2) The story of Hui Neng; 3) What is the reality of no-thing; 4) The lesson of Ajahn Chah on Nature and the Dharma; 5) The lesson of plants and animals; 6) Why are we disconnected from our true nature? 7) How do we re-discover and re-connect to our Buddha nature.

Recorded May 4, 2013

 1) The logic of the Wisdom Tradition; 2) Toward a “functional” definition of compassion and lovingkindness; 3) The meaning of Resolve: What does it take to change our lives; 4) The meaning of compassion and lovingkindness as an expression of ultimate reality.

Recorded May 11, 2013

 1) The logic of the Wisdom Path; 2) The definition of Metta or Lovingkindness; 3) The Four Brahmaviharas: Lovingkindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, and Equanimity; 4) Applications of Compassion in everyday life; 5) Two views on Compassion and Lovingkindness.

Recorded May 18, 2013

Topics Include: 1) The movement from compassion to equanimity; 2) The moment to moment manifestation of equanimity; 3) The four Brahmaviharas; 4) Compassion and neuroplasticity.

Recorded May 25, 2013

 1) Equanimity as a problem solving process; 2) Equanimity as presented within the classical Theravadin tradition; 3) Equanimity with the context of the Jhana practice; 4) Equanimity with the context of the Sixteen Stages of Awakening; 5) The dual track of deepening jhanic states and conceptual awareness; 6) The teaching of Bhikkhu Bodhi; 7) The teaching of Nyanaponika Thera.

Recorded June 1, 2013