Category: Audio Dharma Talks

1) The basic definition of conventional and absolute reality. 2) Definition of the five aggregates. 3) The misperception of solidity to what are systems of parts and processes. 4) The clinging to the aggregates as the cause of suffering. 5) Relating the concept of non self to the concept of emptiness.

December 18, 2021

1) How reality is constituted of parts and processes and how we identify and cling to them. 2) The constituent parts of conventional and absolute reality. 3) Identifying the four elements as the basis for the felt sense of experience: absolute reality. 4) The difference between concept and reality. 5) The difference between thoughts and the the reality of experience. 6) The difference between thoughts and emotions. 7) Understanding the felt sense of experience as absolute reality.

August 5,2017

1) How the five aggregates constitute our mistaken notion of self. 2) Understanding feelings as pleasant, unpleasant and neutral and their karmic implications. 3) How our actions are motivated by what we like and don’t like. 4) Understanding the impermanence of feelings. 5) Dependent origination as the karmic explanation of suffering as a result of feelings.

August 12, 2017

1) The importance of perception in perceiving the difference between conventional and absolute reality. 2) How the mechanism of perception unfolds through the six sense doors. 3) How the quality of perception can lead to suffering or awakening: perception that is mindful and not mindful.

August 18, 2017

1) The crucial role of perception in understanding the difference between absolute and conventional reality. 2) The reality of concepts and symbols as as the window through which we see the world. 3) How the self of ego is an artifact, a concept. 4) Words and language as abstract conceptual systems to describe reality. 5) The basis of our thoughts in language as an abstract, symbolic system through which we perceive the world. 6) Two degrees of separation from reality; an abstract, symbolic system of thought, conditioned by the life experience of each individual. 7) The importance of perception in distinguishing illusion from reality and the role of meditation. 8) The power of meditation in dispelling illusion and seeing reality for what it really is. 9) Example of how perception determines how we see the world.

August 26, 2017

1) Review of the first two aggregates: material form and sensations. 2) Abstract symbols and concepts as the basis for language and thoughts: the basis for illusion. 3) Understanding the self or the ego as a conditioned artifact. 4) The difference between seeing with mindfulness and and seeing without mindfulness. 5) Examples of how we misperceive the world: concepts of place, possession and time. 6) The delusion of self image.

September 2, 2017

1) How our understanding of self affects our moral and ethical view of the world. 2) Mental formations as they are defined in the Buddhist Abhidhamma. 3) Definition of consciousness and mental formations: citta and cetasika. 4) The 52 mental formations and their organization into four categories. 5) The first two categories: the universals and the occasionals. 6) The moral and ethical implications of our mind states and their karmic implications for suffering or freedom.

September 16, 2017

1) Understanding suffering and freedom from suffering as a fundamental question of morality and ethics. 2) Seeing the definition of self and non-self as crucial to our understanding of morality and ethics and, ultimately, suffering. 3) The fourteen unwholesome mental factors: delusion, shamelessness, fearlessness of wrong, restlessness, greed, wrong view, conceit, hatred, envy, avarice, worry, sloth, torpor, and doubt. 4) Understanding how these mental macros are the precursor to unwholesome actions. 5) Learning to recognize and investigate these mind states to avoid subsequent unwholesome actions.

September 23, 2017

1) The three types of mental factors. 2) The unwholesome mental factors and the historical example of the Vietnam War. 3) The importance of understanding morality and ethics as the foundation of the Dharma teachings. 4) Recitation of the 25 beautiful mind states. 5) Understanding the beautiful mind states as the foundation for basic intelligence.

September 30, 2017

1) Understanding morality and ethics as the foundation of the Buddhist teaching. 2) Recitation of the 25 beautiful mind states: confidence, mindfulness, shame and fear of harm, non-attachment, good will, neutrality of mind, tranquillity, lightness of mind, malleability of mind, wildness of mind, proficiency of mind, rectitude of mind, right speech, right action, right livelihood, compassion, sympathetic joy, and wisdom. 3) Understanding the danger of identifying with these mental states and creating a sense of self 4) Understanding what lead to the arising of moods and mind states.

October 7, 2017

1) The basic foundation of the Dharma teachings on morality and ethics. 2) Understanding our reaction to negative mindstates at the conventional and absolute level. 3) Understanding conditions as the basis of the impersonal nature of mental formations. 4) Seeing right action as the synthesis of awareness at the conventional and absolute levels of reality. 5) Learning to accept difficult emotions as gateways to learning and insight about ourselves. 6) Acknowledging the internal freedom that results from understanding the impersonal nature of our emotions.

October 14, 2017

1) Understanding all our actions as a result of mental factors. 2) The basic components of every moment of consciousness. 3) The primacy of volition as a means of choosing what to be conscious of in our environment. 4) Understanding karma as a result of conditioned voices, or volition as the seed of karma. 5) Motivation as primary driver of intention. 6) Understanding the roots of suffering or freedom. 7) Seeing intention in our everyday actions. 8) Understanding our entire lives as a flow of intentions and actions with no self involved. 9) Seeing “perfection” in the flow of karmic events in our lives. 10) Coming to true self acceptance and love though knowing our karma fully.

October 21, 2017

1) The concept of “non-self” and its implications for our understanding of morality and ethics. 2) How conditions, intentions, and actions unfold to create our lives. 3) Seeing “perfection” in our lives in a way that leads to self acceptance, compassion, and lovingkindness. 4) Learning how to see the intentions that precede our actions. 5) Seeing the sequence of mental and physical actions, or nama rupa, and the opportunity for wise choice in our actions. 6) How the flow of mind and body moments unfold as the process of cause and effect or karma. 7) Nama rupa, and karma as formal stages of insight in the classical Theravadin tradition. 8) How the knowledge of nama rupa and karma can lead to freedom from suffering, self acceptance, and compassion. 9) Seeing the parallel dimensions of our conventional lives and the absolute reality that moves within us.

November 4, 2017

1) Consciousness as the “cognizing power of the mind.” 2) The quality of “bare awareness.” 3) The impermanent and conditioned nature of consciousness. 4) The nature of the flow of “mind moments.” 5) Consciousness itself as an act of choice. 6) Learning to “re-language” our experience. 7) Seeing intentions as preceding actions and the knowing as action occurs as successive moments of mind and body.

November 11, 2017

1) Review of the basic characteristics of consciousness. 2) The process of the object arising and the knowing of it, or nama rupee. 3) How to distinguish the act of knowing from the object itself. 4) Beginning to see impermanence in each act of consciousness by observing the passing away of phenomena. 5) Experiencing moments of clear, lucid awareness. 6) the dangers of becoming attached to pure awareness in our meditation. 7) That dangers of being trapped in our conditioned minds and not seeing the world as it actually is. 8) Seeing clearly the simultaneous interactions between conventional and absolute reality and its implications for morality and ethics.

November 18, 2017

1) Understanding the teachings not as abstract concepts but as the basis for experiential learning. 2) How our experience of pain is heightened by our identification with our bodies as being our self. 3) How redefining our relationship to self changes our basic concept of morality and ethics. 4) The primacy of impermanence in the three characteristics of existence. Noting the arising and passing away of phenomena. 5) Seeing impermanence at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. 6) The delusion of happiness in things that are impermanent. 7) Getting attached to concentration sites in meditation instead of seeking awareness of impermanence. 8) Abandoning “ownership” of the five aggregates as self.

December 2, 2017

1) The basic logic underlying the concept of non-self. 2) How we create a sense of self through our experiences. 3) Two basic questions: 1) How do we fall into the delusion of a tangible self; 2) If I am not a self, what am I? 4) The five characteristics of delusion: form, language, thought, conditioning, and ego. 5) The illusion of Form: the fallacy of misplaced perception. 6) Language: seeing reality as a system of abstract symbolic concepts. 7) Thoughts: the internalization of language in our minds. 8) Conditioning: how we are all programmed to see the world. 9) Ego: the culmination and internalization of all our thoughts and conditioning.

December 9, 2017

1) Review of the five factors that create the illusion of self: form, language, thought, conditioning, and ego. 2) How the understanding of non self defines the nature of the spiritual journey. 3) The problem of “complacency of observation” where we are satisfied with the superficial appearance of objects.

December 16, 2017

1) Review of the basic logic of non self. 2) Review of the five elements of delusion. 3) Defining the process of identification as the basis for illusion. 4) Creating a sense of self by memorializing our thoughts in our minds. How we build stories in our minds. 5) Coming to terms with our thoughts as a form of sufferings or as a gateway to freedom. 6) Building life stories or core beliefs about ourselves through our identification with our emotions.

December 23, 2017

1) Review of the logic of non-self: the five elements of delusion. 2) Joseph Goldstein and the metaphor of the “Big Dipper.” 3) The Buddha’s questions to Anuradda on the nature of the self. 4) Understanding the nature of perception and the logic of conventional and absolute reality to to see what is self and non-self. 5) If not self, what are we? The capacity for pure conscious awareness. 6) The contemporary discourse on the nature of consciousness. The concept of fitness vs. truth and the theory of conscious agents. The work of Don Hoffman. 7) Redefining our relationship our selves and others through our deeper understanding of self and non-self.

December 30, 2017

1) The classical teachings on sensual desire: Nyanaponika Thera; 2) De-nourishing sensual desire; 3) Expanding the traditional definition of sensual desire; 4) Understanding desires and attachments as a result of conditioning; 5) The role of mindfulness in working with sensual desire.
July 29, 2013

1) Understanding sensual desire and ill will as expressions of conditioning and Karma. 2) The classical teachings on ill will: Nyanaponika Thera; 2) De-nourishing ill will; 3) Expanding the traditional definition of ill will; 4) Seeing Ego as a conditioned and ephemeral process; 5) The role of mindfulness in working with negative emotions.
July 6, 2013

1. Seeing the hindrances as part of our deeper psychological patterns; 2. Definition of sloth and torpor; 3. Antidotes to sloth and torpor; 4. The classical teachings on sloth and torpor; 5. A broader definition of sloth and torpor; 6. Deeper psychological implications of aversion. 7. The power of mindfulness in seeing our deeper selves.
July 13, 2013

1. Definition of restlessness and remorse; 2. Using meditation to see the deeper roots of restlessness and agitation; 3. Seeing our reactions as expressions of desire or aversion; 4. Seeing restlessness in two different ways; 5. Understanding remorse; 6. Understanding the deeper meaning of suffering.
July 20, 2013

1. Definition of doubt in the teachings and the practice; 2. The importance of sensing benefit from the practice; 3. Sharing of my personal experiences; 4. The fruit of emotional awareness; 5. The fear of letting go; 6. The sharing of a personal experience.
August 10, 2013

1) The importance of understanding the Dharma wisdom embedded in the Sixteen Stages of Awakening and the importance of addressing each stage one step at a time. 2) Sources include the work of Mahasi Sayadaw and Sayadaw U Jotika. 3) Sayadaw Mahasi’s explanation of Mind and Body or Nama Rupa, the first of the Sixteeen Stages. 4) Sayadaw U Jotika’s explanation of Nama Rupa. 5) Learning to distinguish between pure awareness and discursive processing of our experience in meditation. 6) Understanding how our thinking process defines our self or our ego. 7) Understanding nama rupa in terms of being in a state of flow. 8) Understanding how the self arises during times of threat, fear, anxiety or anger. 9) Understanding the relationship between conventional and absolute reality, the place of self in conventional reality and non-self in absolute reality, and how we embody both simultaneously in our lives.
December 18, 2021

1) The importance of the Sixteen Stages in the Theravadan monastic tradition. 2) Review of the first insight awakening: knowledge of mind and body. 3) Understanding the difference between awareness and thinking: how awareness is non-self and thinking imposes a sense of self on our experience. 4) The second insight awareness: understanding conditionality: the law of cause and effect or karma. 5) Understanding intention or volition and the ensuing action as cause and effect or the basis for karma. 6) Understanding that by imposing our thoughts on to the cause and effect process, we bring a sense of self into our experience. 7) The attainment of joy and bliss at the realization of nama rupa and the law of karma. 8) How understanding the power of conditioning can help free ourselves from unhappiness and suffering. 9) Understanding the burden of the self that we carry from lifetime to lifetime.
January 8, 2022

1) Definition of the Sixteen Stages of Awakening. 2) What it means to be an Arahant. How your character as a person changes. 3) The spectrum from extreme selfishness to extreme selflessness. 4) How the understanding of self and non-self can be applied to our daily life. 5) Reviewing the concept of Nama Rupa: Mind and Body and the process of cause and effect. 6) Examples of how to apply these principles in our daily lives and the power of karma to overcome suffering in our lives.
January 15, 2022

1) Moment of silence in tribute to Thich Nhat Hahn. 2) Understanding in simple terms the relationship between conventional and absolute reality and its relationship to the concepts of self and non-self. 3) Understanding what differentiates humans from animals as a sense of self consciousness derived from our larger brain size and capacity to think discursively as a result of evolution. 4) If animals don’t have a sense of self consciousness, then what do they have? Animals operate out a sense of pure conscious awareness based on instinct and learning, in human terms; a state of flow. 5) How human beings embody both levels of awareness, our base consciousness and our discursive thought process, or absolute reality and conventional reality. How our discursive thought process creates the illusion of self. 6) Understanding how karma operates at the conventional level and not the absolute level. Finding the balance between the two in our lives. Finding the middle way. 7) Learning to appreciate the two aspects of our consciousness.
January 22, 2022

1) Review of Nama Rupa or Mind and Matter, and Cause and Effect, the first two of the Sixteen Stages of Awakening. 2) Relationship to the teaching on Dependent Origination, the conceptual framework for understanding the First Noble Truth, the truth of suffering. 3) Recitation of the twelve steps of Dependent Origination. 4) The first stage: Ignorance: describing a normal individual in everyday life, one who is unaware of the noble path. 5) The second stage: Mental formations: thoughts, actions and volitional acts that reflect the conditioning that we experience in our lives. The development of sankharas, or conditioning formations in our lives. 6) The third stage: consciousness, or how we perceive our experience through our six sense doors. 7) The fourth stage: name and form: the application of consciousness to our experience. How our conditioning colors not only how we respond to our experience, but also the direction our lives will move into the future. 8) Understanding how the first four stages describe the development and manifestation of our personalities or our sense of self in the world. 9) The difference between humans and animals in the creation of a sense of self and the application of the law of karma. How the sense of self arises in humans.
January 30, 2022

1) Understanding Dependent Origination as the foundation for the First Noble Truth, the truth of suffering. 2) Review of the twelve steps of Dependent Origination: the three parts, the formation of karma, the nature of experience, and the development of suffering. 3) Review of the first phase: the formation of karma. 4) The process of experience itself: The six sense doors, Contact, and Feeling. 5) The beginning of suffering: Craving, Clinging, Becoming, Birth, Old Age and Death. 6) The crucial link between feeling and craving: experiencing feelings without craving or clinging. 7) Understanding Dependent Origination operates in our lives in terms of the life decisions we make for ourselves. 8) Living a life of balance between conventional and absolute reality.

1) Review of the sixteen stages of awakening. 2) Understanding the sixteen stages as the foundation for the four levels of enlightenment: Stream Enterer, Once Returner, Non Returner, and Arahant. 3) The three characteristics of all phenomena: impermanence, suffering, and non self. 4) Understanding thoughts as discrete phenomena with a beginning, middle, and end. 5) Understanding how observing phenomena with mindfulness causes them to diminish and disappear and understanding the result as impermanence. 6) Seeing suffering as the breaking up and destruction of thought moments, the lack of continuity and permanence and the ephemerality of experience: the lack of any solid footing for experience. 7) Seeing experience as the play of impersonal phenomena. Nothing arises of its own. The basis for the idea of non-self. 8) Seeing our suffering as rooted in the impersonal forces of karma working through us. 9) Question: Understanding negative thoughts that enter into the mind. 10) Question: How to reframe our idea of suffering as something positive and beautiful.

February 12, 2022

1) Review of the Mahasi teaching of the three characteristics. 2) Sayadaw U Jotika: Seeing the cascade of impermanent thought moments, slowing experience down through intense concentration: the illusion of continuity. 3) Understanding our experience as pure natural phenomena, not abstract concepts. 4) Seeing the qualities of impermanence, causality, and impersonality. 5) Seeing impersonality in our complete lack of control over what happens in the mind or body. 6) Comprehension by direct experience and comprehension by inference. 7) Attaining mental health by clear comprehension. 8) Understanding ourselves as psycho-physical processes. 9) Why we suffer as a result of our identification with our experience.
February 19, 2022

1) Seeing the sixteen stages as a journey through deepening stages of insight and deepening levels of meditation. 2) The organization of the sixteen stages into three major parts: discovery, the dark night of the soul, and path and fruition consciousness. 3) Summary of the third stage: impermanence, suffering, and non-self. 4) Beginning the fourth stage: the seeing of lights, the intensification of the clarity of awareness. 5) The power of noting. Feeling a sense of gratitude and fulfillment of the practice. 6) Coming into rapture and bliss in the first jhana: a description of the state of rapture. 7) How being in meditation allows us to see our experience in a way that we would not be able to in our ordinary state of mind.
February 26, 2022

1) The fourth meditative insight: Insight into Rising and Falling. Where the dynamics of the meditation process and the deepening of insight merge together. 2) Signs of developing jhana: the appearance of light, the sharpening of mindfulness, the five levels of rapture. 3) The emergence of tranquillity of mind and a sense of mental agility. 4) The twenty five beautiful mind states: the qualities of mental composure, buoyancy, pliancy, efficiency, proficiency, and rectitude of mind. 5) The resulting feeling of happiness suffusing the entire body and the arising of right energy and equanimity. 6) The corruptions of insight: the rising of attachment to our mental states, a sense of personal identification with our achievements. 7) Applying mindfulness to an understanding of the suffering in today’s world.
March 5, 2022

 1) The work Sayadaw U Jotika: Summary of third stage of insight: impermanence, suffering and non-self. 2) The understanding of no “Thing”, only process: the corresponding idea of nouns and verbs in our linguistic consciousness that ignore the basic laws of process in nature. 3) Understanding the pervasive nature of impermanence….how all things are impermanent. 4) Seeing the difference between numbers and shapes as opposed to physical sensations in the meditation process. How this relates to the question of agency in terms of how we respond to our experience. 5) The difference between change and real impermanence. 6) Feeling equanimity and balance in the meditative process. 7) Why phenomena disappear when seen with true mindfulness. 8) Coming into pure awareness, rapture and bliss and wisdom. 9) Falling into the trap of identifying with our experience. 10) The difference between concentration practice and mindfulness practice. 11) The danger of becoming attached to our experience. 12) The characteristics of clear deep mindfulness: clarity of mind and object and the danger of attachment. 13) Seeing the various stages of phenomena: first, arising; second, arising and passing away; and third, passing away. 14) How the object and the consciousness of that object both arise and pass away: the impermanence of mindfulness itself.
March 12, 2022

 1) Stage Five: Knowledge of Passing Away: the beginning of the stages of the “dark night of the soul.” 2) Understanding impermanence at its deepest level. 3) Moving through the fourth stage, the understanding of rise and fall, and getting past the corruptions of insight. 4) The transition from content to process in meditation. 5) Knowledge of dissolution or passing away. 6) The breaking up of continuity of consciousness: the analogy of time lapse photography…how we create our reality through the illusion of continuity and what we project into our experience…experience as a holographic projection. 7) Seeing reality as the simultaneous arising of the object and the awareness of the object. 8) The arising of fear and terror. The start of the “dark night of the soul.” 9) How the mind works: the analogy of a sewing machine. The possibility for a deeper understanding of who we are and our potential for freedom.
March 19, 2022

1) Introduction to the Sixteen Stages: Discovery, the Dark Night of the Soul, Path and Fruition. 2) Transitioning from the stages of discovery to the dark night of the soul: a deepening sense of apprehension about the nature of reality: the rise of fear. 3) The deconstruction of reality: the illusion of continuity. 4) Sayadaw U Jotika: characteristics of passing away. 5) The rise of disenchantment. The loss of a sense of self. 6) Seeing impermanence and impersonality in all conditioned phenomena. The rise of despair and fear. 7) Seeing impermanence itself as suffering.
March 26, 2022

1) Transitioning from the first five stages of discovery, to the next five stages of the dark night of the soul. 2) Moving from the knowledge of passing away to the knowledge of fear. 3) Stage 7: Knowledge of Misery. Seeing suffering in impermanence itself. 4) Stage 8: Knowledge of Disgust. Realizing our reaction to the truth. 5) Stage 9: Knowledge of Desire for Deliverance. 6) Stage 10: Knowledge of Re-Observation: the realization that impermanence itself is the source of suffering because of our attachment to continuity and cohesion. Persevering in the practice to overcome fear, misery, disgust, and desire for deliverance. 7) Seeing that impermanence itself is the cause of suffering because of our attachment to continuity, cohesion and stability. 8) Coming to truly accept the law of impermanence. Understanding its implications for our lives.
April 2, 2022

 1) Summary of the three phases of the sixteen stages: Discovery, the Dark Night of the Soul, and Path and Fruition Consciousness. 2) The Dark Night of the Soul: Knowledge of Fear, Disgust or Misery, Weariness, Desire for Deliverance, and Knowledge of Reconciliation. 3) Review of the stage of knowledge of Passing Away: the illusions of compactness and continuity and their relationship to absolute and conventional reality. 4) The writings of Sayadaw U Jotika: seeing the constant arising and passing away as dangerous…moving to a state of disenchantment. 5) Seeing impermanence itself as suffering, in terms of the negative mindstates, as a result of your resistance to the truth of impermanence. 6) Coming to a true acceptance of impermanence as the gateway to final awakening. 7) Question on the danger of being caught up in the dark night of the soul.
April 9, 2022

1) Review of the Sixteen Stages: transitioning from the dark night of the soul to re-observation and reconciliation and peace. 2) The notion of the spiritual process as a journey of awakening: the metaphor of a river merging with the sea. 3) Entering the Stage of Re-observation from the stages of fear and misery. 4) Reviewing the illusion of compactness and continuity. 5) Reaching the point of Re-observation where we see that impermanence itself is the source of our suffering. 6) Coming to Stage 11 which is equanimity about formations. 7) Understanding the deepening jhanic states that are occurring as we move through the stages of insight.
April 16, 2022

 1) Brief review of the sixteen stages. 2) Transitioning from the stages of the dark night of the soul to the state of complete equanimity–the writings of Sayadaw U Jotika. 3) The writings of Mahasi Sayadaw on the transition from equanimity to the beginning of path and fruition consciousness. 4) Attaining the moment of awakening or the moment of complete cessation. 5) Understanding the implications of cessation in terms of our attachment to self, suffering and fear of death.
04/23/2022

 1) Brief review of the phases of the sixteen stages. 2) Stage 12: Insight into Emergence or the arising of Cessation…the attainment of Nibbana. 3) Stage 13 to 15: Knowledge of Maturity and Path and Fruition Consciousness: The realization that Nibbana has occurred. 4) Stage 16: Knowledge of Retrospection: the full awareness in the mind of what has occurred. 5) Understanding Nibbana as attaining the Deathless. 6) Coming to a deeper understanding of the process of cessation…understanding the transition from the state of equanimity to actual cessation of consciousness.
April 30, 2022

 1) Entering the Stage of Path and Fruition from the Stage of Equanimity the writing of Sayadaw U Jotika. 2) The arising of total cessation, moving through the stages of Path and Fruition and coming to the stage of Retrospection or realization of what just happened. 3) Understanding the nature of cessation. 4) Seeing the attainment of Nibbana as the first of four stages of spiritual evolution: Stream Enterer, Once Returner, Non-Returner, and Arahant. 5) Seeing the movement through the four stages as a process of eliminating the ten fetters: doubt, avariciousness, belief in rites and rituals, envy and jealousy, false view, sensual desire, ill will and anger, pride and conceit, ignorance, and desire for existence. 6) Having a sense of compassion for ourselves in our spiritual journey through understanding the difficulty of spiritual transformation through behavioral transformation in our lives.
May 7, 2022

1) Review of the Sixteen Stages of Awakening: A) The Stages of Discovery: Insight into Mind and Body, Cause and Effect, The Three Characteristics, Rise and Fall; B) The Stages of The Dark Night of the Soul: Insight into Passing Away, Fear, Disgust and Misery, Weariness, and Desire for Deliverance; C) The Stages of Path and Fruition Consciousness: Knowledge of Reconciliation; Equanimity, Adaptation, Maturity, Path Consciousness, Fruition Consciousness and Retrospection. 2) Reviewing the process of Retrospection: the writings of Mahasi Sayadaw: Realizing that Nibbana has occurred. 3) Repetition of the cycle further to higher levels of Path and Fruition Consciousness: the higher levels of awakening to the second, third and fourth levels. 4) How going through the sixteen stages is not so much a matter of achievement as it is about how we have changed as people in our behavior: the overcoming of the ten fetters.
May 14, 2022

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

1) The six sense sees: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. The sense base, the sense object, and the activity of perceiving. 2) How our entire life experience is mediated through the six sense doors. 3) How the sense spheres can lead to suffering or to awakening and enlightenment. 4) The fundamentally selfless nature of perception. The research of Sir Francis Crick. 5) Seeing “perfection” in our perception of our experience. 6) Learning to “disidentify” with our experience and let go of our suffering.

Recorded January 20, 2018

1) Definition of the six sense spheres. 2) Two central ideas in understanding the six sense spheres: a. how our sense experiences can lead to suffering or awakening, and b. the non-self nature of experience. 3) Sir Francis Crick and the Astonishing Hypothesis. 4) The meaning of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon.

Recorded February 3, 2018

1) Review of the six sense spheres. 2) Relationship between the six sense spheres and karma. 3) The concept of dependent origination: integrating the idea of karma, the six sense spheres, and the process of samsaric rebirth…the essential Buddhist cosmology. 4) The teaching of dependent origination: the law of karma. 5) The twelve stages of dependent origination: ignorance, volitional formations, consciousness, name and form, the sixfold base, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, aging and death. 6) Breaking the causal sequence of suffering by differentiating between feeling and craving…the role of mindfulness.

Recorded February 17, 2018

1) Review of the teaching of the six sense spheres. 2) How we get seduced by the “pleasure principle.” 3) The basic steps of dependent origination. 4) Bringing mindfulness to the perceptual process.

Recorded February 24, 2018

1) Review of the teaching of the Six Sense Spheres and Dependent Origination. 2) Using our meditation practice to understand craving, attachment, and clinging. 3) Bringing mindfulness to the point of contact in our experience. 4) The importance of noting our sensory experiences. 5) Resting in the knowing of an experience. 6) How noting the six sense doors eliminates the drama of our life stories. 7) Being mindful of how we react to our experience. 8) Using mindfulness to work with our addictions.

Recorded March 3, 2018

1) Review of the teaching of the six sense spheres. 2) Examining tanha, or desire as the underlying energy beneath craving and wanting. 3) Understanding desire as an energy that arises and passes away. 4) Beginning observe desire as it arises in the mind and when it passes away. 5) Other ways in which we can fall prey to desire. 6) Finding empowerment in the choices we make about desire and aversion in our lives.

March 10, 2018

1) Review of the teaching of the six sense spheres. 2) The importance of perception in determining how we respond to our emotions. 3) The four ways in which we don’t see reality as it truly is: the illusion of name and form; the illusion of language; the illusion of thought; the illusion of ego. 4) The role of perception as a result of our conditioning process. 5) The effect of latent tendencies in the mind in influencing our experience.

Recorded March 17 2018

1) Review of the teachings on the six sense spheres. 2) How our human conditioning limits our capacity for consciousness and seeing reality as it truly is. 3) What is ignorance? The revolutionary implications of the Buddha’s teaching. 4) The four hallucinations of perception: taking what is impermanent to be permanent; taking what is not beautiful to be beautiful; taking what is suffering to be happiness; taking what is non-self to be self. 5) Understanding impermanence. Understanding clinging and attachment. 6) Learning to find joy in the face of impermanence. 7) Understanding the importance of gratitude for what we have in the face of impermanence.

Recorded March 24, 2018

1) Review of the teaching of the six sense spheres. 2) The four hallucinations of perception: taking is impermanent to be permanent, taking what is not beautiful to be beautiful; taking what is suffering to be happiness; and taking what is non-self to be self. 3) How the Buddha’s teaching calls into question the core assumptions about how we live our lives based on the law of natural selection and the Freudian pleasure principle. 4) Coming the know the reality of impermanence in our lives. 5) Understanding how we mistake what is not beautiful to be beautiful.

Recorded March 31, 2018

Topics Include: 1) Statement of the four hallucinations of perception. 2) Reconciling two conflicting views of impermanence. 3) Taking what is suffering to be happiness. 4) How we are seduced into a false sense of happiness through the pursuit of sensual pleasure. 5) Understanding how what we call suffering can be the source of happiness. Buddha’s call to restraint and moderation. 6) How understanding suffering can lead to awakening.

Recorded April 7, 2018

Topics Include: 1) Review of the first three hallucinations of perception. 2) The fourth hallucination: taking what is non self to be self. 3) Understanding self and non self in terms of conventional and absolute reality. 4) The problem of identification: the cause of suffering. 5) The importance of story: while representing self on the conventional level, stories do represent the quality of our lives, whether that of suffering or freedom.

Recorded April 14, 2018

Topics Include: 1) Review of the six sense spheres. 2) Why we don’t see reality as it truly is: the illusion of form, language, and thought. 3) The four hallucinations of perception. 4) Recognizing the fundamental power of mastering our perceptions of our experience. 5) The power of mindfulness in seeing our experience as it truly is.

Recorded April 21, 2018

Topics Include: 1) The four hallucinations of perception. 2) Learning how to master our perception of our experience. 3) The power of mindfulness in developing mastery over our perceptions. 4) Not seeing the world as it actually is: the difference between absolute and conventional reality. 5) How mindfulness opens the door to self understanding. 6) Distinguishing conventional and absolute reality in the meditative process: the difference between thoughts and emotions; the way we focus on the object on concentration.

Recorded May 5, 2018

Topics Include: 1) The basic teaching of the six sense spheres. 2) Why we don’t see reality as it truly is: the illusion of form. 3) The four hallucinations of perception. 4) The power of mindfulness to master our perceptions of reality. 5) Different methods of training our perception. 6) Understanding perception as a two stages process: the act of perception and the thoughts we bring to that perception. 7) Understanding our experience internally and externally as the basis for developing empathy and compassion. 8) Understanding impermanence at the six sense doors.

Recorded May 12, 2018