Tag: moral shame

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

1) Review of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. 2) Introduction to the term and problems in the definition of “dukkha”. 3) Original Pali definition of “dukkha” as the badly fitting axle of a wheel. 4) The illusion of “agency” or a sense of self who controls our body and our life. 5) Difference between “unsatisfactoriness” and “suffering” and the meaning of awakening. 6) Seeing “dukkha” in all the aspects of our temporal lives and, at a deeper level in the nature of experience itself.

Recorded July 6, 2019

1) Problems in the definition of the word Dukkha. 2) The Five Aggregates of Clinging as suffering. 3) Understanding dukkha internally, externally and both. 4) Understanding how we transform moments of suffering into moments of insight, wisdom and transformation. 5) Seeing impermanence and change as dukkha. 6) Dukkha as the burdensomeness of conditioned existence. 7) The Law of Natural Selection: how it treats the context for dukkha in our lives. 8) How the seeing of suffering begins to evoke true compassion in our lives.

Recorded July 13, 2019

1) The different levels of ways of understanding dukkha. 2) Dukkha as the burdensomeness of existence: the law of entropy. 3) Dukkha and Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection. 4) Examples of how natural selection creates the conditions for our human development: for males, female and in the external environment. 5) The case for awakening: becoming conscious of our conditioning and our suffering as a gateway to awakening. 6) Understanding compassion as the great gift of our awakening to suffering in our lives. 7) Realizing our true gifts as human beings while not falling prey to greed, hatred, and delusion. 8) Seeing our spiritual path as being in our conditioned existence and not apart from it. 9) Seeing true beauty, strength, power, wisdom and compassion in our karmic truth.

Recorded July 20,2019

1) Craving as the origin of dukkha: craving for sensual pleasure. 2) Craving as tanha or thirst. 3) The Buddha’s question: what is the gratification that we get from pleasure? 4) How we get addicted to pleasant sensations and how it can lead to unskillful actions. 5) Understanding craving as a passing thought in the mind for small pleasures. 6) Bringing mindfulness to our habit patterns of desire and craving for sense pleasures.

Recorded August 3, 2019

1) How suffering is defined in the First Noble Truth. 2) Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection and how it sets the conditions for suffering. 3) Why conditions defined as dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness, don’t necessarily lead to suffering, depending on our understanding of our conditioning. 4) How unsatisfactory conditions can lead to suffering through sankhara, or mental formations based on our conditioning. 5) Coming for freedom based on our understanding of how we are conditioned by dukkha and the survival strategies that we adopt to overcome dukkha. 6) Finding the link between how our conditioning creates craving, the foundation for suffering, anyhow it plays out in our craving for pleasant feelings.

Recorded August 10, 2019

1) The significance of the First ad Second Noble Truth in terms of understanding the Buddhist samasaric cosmology. 2) Understanding the First Noble Truth with the additional dimension of Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection. 3) How the conditions of life create the basis for suffering through the evolution of craving. 4) How the development of suffering is described in the fundamental teachings of the Buddha: a. The Five Aggregates of Clinging b. The teaching of Dependent Origination. 5) Sharing of a personal story of the passing of my brother.

Recorded August 17, 2019

1) What is the definition of suffering and craving in the First and Second Noble Truths? 2) What are the drawbacks or disadvantages of pleasant feelings? The problem of impermanence. 3) Understanding how the addiction to sensual pleasures occur in our lives. 4) The second danger of craving: leading to unwholesome, unskillful actions.

Recorded August 24, 2019

1) How to understand the unsatisfactoriness of life and its relationship to suffering and craving. 2) How the expectation of pleasant feelings can drive all our life decisions. 3)How we move through the difficulties of life without falling victim to addictive, compulsive drives. 4) Understanding how we get hooked into pleasant feelings and craving. 5) The second danger of craving: how it leads to unwholesome actions in our life. 6) Seeing how craving and affect our own meditation practice. 7) Understanding the difference between aspiration and desire in our lives and not getting caught up in hope and fear.

Recorded August 31, 2019

1) Review of the First Noble Truth and its relationship to the Second Noble Truth. 2) Review of the drawbacks of pleasant feelings. 3) Developing a wiser relationship between myself and the world: becoming disenchanted with the world of pleasure. 4) Understanding what it means to be free from the world. 5) Understanding how I can live in a wiser relationship with the world. 6) Living a life of service. 7) Living in a more balanced relationship with my desires and expectations. 8) Living in a more spacious relationship to the conditions of my life.

Recorded September 7, 2019

1) Review of the First and Second Noble Truth, the drawbacks of pleasant feelings, and how to live in a more balanced relationship to the world. 2) The craving for existence and nonexistence. 3) Who is it that dies? What is the self that dies? 4) Understanding our self as the narrative self. Understanding the dimensions of the narrative self. 5) How understanding who we are in the world transforms how we relate to the idea of death.

Recorded September 14, 2019

1) Review of the First and Second Noble Truths. 2) When facing our own death, asking the question who is it that dies? 3) Stephen Batchelor: emptiness is the realization of something that had never been there in the first place. 4) Jeffery Martin and the concept of the Narrative Self: the Problem Solver, the Story Weaver, the Caretaker. 5) Why this narrative self is not who we really are. 6) What does this mean in terms of how we relate to who we think we are? 7) How does this idea of who we are relate to rebirth, reincarnation and karma. 8) Understanding the gift of the opportunity to be alive in this world.

Recorded September 14, 2019

1) The craving for existence and non-existence. 2) Eternalism vs. Annihilationism: the central question: who is it that dies? 3) The Narrative Self: the work of Jeffrey Martin. 4) How our fear of death conditions our thoughts and behavior: understanding the process of becoming. 5) Getting into the planning, wanting mind and not being in the present moment, 6) Understanding the timelessness of the present moment.

Recorded October 5, 2019

1) Understanding the cessation of suffering as the cessation of craving. 2) Learning to live in the conventional world without craving and suffering. 3) How to attain a mind free of craving: seeing the three characteristics of impermanence, suffering and non-substantiality in all experience. 4) Seeing the impersonal and conditioned nature of all our experience. 5) Learning how to be the one who knows and not one who identifies with one’s experience. 6) Letting go of craving through our capacity to see our experience with true clarity.

Recorded October 12, 2019

1) Finding the end of craving by seeing our experience with true mindfulness: the difference between being in delusion and suffering and being in awakening and liberation. 2) Recognizing our capacity for fundamental awareness. 3) Coming to terms with impermanence and uncontrollability in our experience. 4) Seeing impermanence at the very macro and very micro levels. 5) Seeing impermanence through the lens of mindfulness. 6) Feeling exhilaration at seeing the importance of phenomena. 7) Experiencing fear and despair at the dissolution and uncontrollability of phenomena. 8) Maintaining a sense of balance through this process and arriving at a place of profound equanimity. 9) Question on the nature of self and its relationship to the concept of non-self.

Recorded October 19, 2019

1) Understanding the relationship between the practice of concentration and the practice of mindfulness. 2) The four stages of meditative absorption. 3) How the four stages of absorption are aligned with the sixteen stages of awakening. 4) Stage 1: knowledge of mind and body. 5) Stage 2: knowledge of cause and effect. 6) Stage 3: the three characteristics of experience. 7) Stage 4: knowledge of rise and fall. 8) Stage 5: knowledge of passing away. 9) Stage 6: knowledge of fear. 10) Stage 7-9: knowledge of disgust or misery, knowledge of weariness; knowledge of desire for deliverance. 11) Stage 10-11: knowledge of reconciliation; knowledge of equanimity. 12) Stage 12-13: knowledge of adaptation; knowledge of maturity. 13) Stage 14-15: knowledge of path; knowledge of fruition: the process of cessation. 14) Stage 16: knowledge of retrospection. 15) Coming to a deeper understanding of the awakening process: seeing unconditioned emptiness as the purity of experience itself.

Recorded October 26, 2019

1) Description of the Four Noble Truths and the importance of the Third Noble Truth. 2) The meaning of freedom in the living the truth of our lives. 3) Review of the Sixteen Stages of Awakening. 4) The characteristics of equanimity or neutrality of mind. 5) The transition from equanimity into Nibbana. The attainment of cessation. 6) The transformative power of Nibbana. 7) Non-manifestive consciousness and manifestive consciousness. 8) How awakening allows us to refine our relationship to our mind and our life.

Recorded November 10, 2019

1) Review of non-manifestive consciousness and the state of Nibbana. 2) The dangers of identification that one can fall into. 3) The danger of latent defilements and and how they dilute or condition our perception of Nibbana. 4) The concept of sudden awakening and gradual cultivation: how we bring Nibbana into our daily lives. 5) Understand the presence of fundamental awareness in our lives: the clear and empty nature of awareness itself. 6) The Buddha’s description of Nibbana. 7) Finding the awakened mind.

Recorded November 16, 2019

1) Review of non-manifestive consciousness and the state of Nibbana. 2) The dangers of identification that one can fall into. 3) The danger of latent defilements and and how they dilute or condition our perception of Nibbana. 4) The concept of sudden awakening and gradual cultivation: how we bring Nibbana into our daily lives. 5) Understand the presence of fundamental awareness in our lives: the clear and empty nature of awareness itself. 6) The Buddha’s description of Nibbana. 7) Finding the awakened mind.

Recorded November 23, 2019

1) Introduction to the Eightfold Noble Path. 2) The three subgroups of the path factors: morality factors, meditative factors, wisdom factors. 3) The logic of progressions from morality, to concentration, to wisdom. 4) the fundamental importance of morality, or ahimsa, as the basic foundation of the Dharma. 5) How our spiritual state of being is determined by the nature of our relationship to ourselves and to others. 6) How the nature of relationships determine our conditioning, and how conditioning creates our karma. 7) The importance of right view or right understanding in setting the direction of our practice. 8) The distinction between mundane right view and supra mundane right view.

Recorded January 11, 2020

1) Brief review of the Four Noble Truths and the fundamental principle of ahimsa or non-harming. 2) The Eightfold Noble Path and the logic underlying the organization of the path factors. 3) Right Understanding: Understanding the distinction between mundane and supra-mundane right understanding. 4) Understanding mundane right view: the law of karma. 5) Understanding the relationship between karma, morality and ethics and our contemporary political and social condition.

Recorded January 25, 2020

1) The definition of karma. Understanding wholesome and unwholesome actions. 3) How to bring the practice of “right view” into our daily lives. 4) The power of generosity: Learning how to think of others in a way that ultimately benefits ourselves. 5) Creating a life based on conscious choice rather than unconscious conditioning. 6) Question: What happens if we act out of good intentions but the result is not what we want? 7) Question: What if we have good intentions but make a wrong decision based on lack of information?

Recorded February 1, 2020

1) The definition of mundane and supra mundane right view. 2) Learning understand the basis for volitional action in the mental environment in which we live. 3) Understanding the law of karma as governing our actions in the mundane world. 4) Achieving that understanding that releases us from craving and the world of karma. 5) Visualizing for ourselves a life free of craving, a life purified of suffering.

Recorded February 9, 2020

1) The Buddha’s statement on rebirth, reincarnation, and the different realms of existence. 2) Joseph Goldstein’s “willing suspension of disbelief.” 3) Other ways of understanding transmigration and alternative realms. 4) The issue of Eternalism and Annihilationism: what is it that actually transmigrates from lifetime to lifetime? 5) Sankharas and their influence in our lives. 6) The power of brining our unconscious beliefs and habits into the light of conscious awareness. 7) The meaning of the process of self purification and its implications for awakening and the supra mundane understandings of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity in our lives.

Recorded February 22, 2020

1) Review of the concept of karma and rebirth. 2) The concept of mother and father and how it expresses the movement of karma through generations. 3) Recognizing our special relationship to our parents and expressing our gratitude. 4) The story of Sariputra and his mother. 5) Recognizing our karmic connection not only with our parents but with our children. 6) Seeing the contest of our karmic journey through lifetimes and generations within the context of mundane reality. 7) Understanding the force of karma as it moves through our lives and the quelling of karma through spiritual awakening.

Recorded February 29, 2020

1) Review of mundane right view: the concepts of karma, reincarnation, planes of existence, mother and father. 2) Understanding the karmic universe of which we are a part. 3) Understanding wise and virtuous beings in the world. Opening to the presence of wise people in our lives. 4) Seeing the possibilities in opening to an acceptance of mundane right view in our lives. 5) Visualizing our life stream within the context of the samsaric universe. 6) Understanding supra mundane right view: the elimination of craving. Appreciating the quality and function of wisdom in our own minds so we can know and understand things clearly. 7) Addressing the objective content of wisdom: Understanding the root cause of craving: the sense of self and the five aggregates.

Recorded March 7, 2020

1) Review of mundane right understanding. 2) Explanation of supra mundane right view by Bhikkhu Bodhi. 3) Noble right right view described as wisdom or panna. 4) Noble right view described as the realization of the Four Noble Truths. 5) Understanding the reality of suffering and clinging. 6) Understanding non-self with respect to the five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. 7) Imagining what it would mean to live in the world with an understanding of non-self. 8) Understanding the difference between self and non-self in terms of conventional and absolute reality. 9) Beginning to see non-self in terms of impermanence in the meditative process. 10) If we are non-self, then what are we?

Recorded March 14, 2020

1) Review of the eight Noble Path Factors. 2) The first path factor, right understanding: differentiating between mundane and supra mundane right understanding. 3) Review of the karma factors of mundane understanding. 4) Beings who are reborn spontaneously, and wise and reclusive Brahmins. 5) The devaluation of wisdom in contemporary western culture. 6) The three ways in which we recognize and aspire to wisdom in our lives. 7) Learning from difficult people in our lives. 8) Bhikkhu Bodhi’s summary of mundane and supra mundane right view. 9) Reflection on the importance of meditation in our lives especially during these difficult times.

July 19, 2020

1) Review of supra mundane wisdom. Overcoming the five aggregates of clinging: the delusion of self. 2) The difference between conceptual understanding and experiential embodiment: the words of Bhikkhu Bodhi. 3) The wrong view of self or shakya ditto as the primary cause of suffering. How does the sense of self cause us to suffer? 4) So, how do we overcome these five aggregates or the sense of self? 5) So, why do we cling to the idea of self even in the face of scientific evidence? The problem of cognitive dissonance. 6) Realizing that cognitive dissonance may define our relationship to the truth of non self: the role of mindfulness. 7) Seeing cognitive dissonance through the lens of a willing suspension of disbelief. 7) Understanding self and non self through the understanding of conventional and absolutely reality.

August 1, 2020

Topics Include: 1) Understanding the five aggregates: cognitive dissonance and the willing suspension of disbelief. 2) The difference between conventional and absolute reality. 3) The classical definition of non self: impermanence and conditionality. 4) Understanding the five aggregates through the lens of conventional and absolute reality: the physical body. 5) The mental factors: feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness 6) What is the difference between a thought and an emotion? 7) Language and the illusion of form. 8) The balance between conventional and absolute reality. Realizing this balance in our lives. 9) Realizing our absolute nature and the diminishing of craving in our lives leading to freedom from the rounds of birth and rebirth.

August 8, 2020

1) Transmigration: the trail of tears. The legacy of the sense of self and the five aggregates of clinging. 2) The tension of cognitive dissonance and the willing suspension of disbelief. 3) The Buddha’s teaching on impermanence and conditionality. 4) The perspective of conventional and absolute reality. How does this relate to your bodies and our minds? 5) The relationship between thoughts and emotions: what is a thought? 6) Understanding emotions as “pre-verbal” or “non-symboli” responses to our experience. 7) The irony in the illusion of self: the arousal of craving and desire and their transmigration from lifetime to lifetime. The cycle of delusion that comprises the round of samsara. 8) The implications of mindfulness in seeing reality as it really is: the reality of death and dying: what is it that dies? 9) The life that we miss because of our ignorance and not knowing. 10) The cycle of delusion that defines the round of samsara in our lives. 11) Opening to the truth of our experience with a sense of acceptance, openness, compassion and love: the power of meditation. 12) Ultimately, finding the balance between conventional and absolute reality in our lives.

August 15, 2020

1) Sharing of messages concerning the integration of conventional and absolute reality–.bringing presence into our lives. 2) Review of the fundamental teachings: the five aggregates of clinging, impermanence, and conditionality. 3) What is the difference between conventional and absolute reality for the body and the mind? 4) The difference between thoughts and emotions. 5) What is the reality of pain? How can we feel pain if there is no self? 6) What is the relationship of art and music to conventional and absolute reality? 7) Finding presence in our physical and daily activities. 8) The power of conditioning in denying the truth of who we are.

August 22, 2020

1) The relationship between conventional and absolute reality and the concept of self and non-self. 2) Opening to dream like states of unconditional love and kindness in our daily lives….Opening to to the beauty of our “Buddha Nature” and integrating it into our everyday lives. 3) The power of habit energy and how it can harden into a sense of self and lead to violence, death, and destruction. 4) The question of medically assisted suicide and the Dharma. 5) Coming to a wise understanding of death and dying and how it can help us to live a more meaningful life. 6) Conventional reality and the concept of the narrative self…the work of Dr. Jeffrey Martin. 7) The enduring power of delusions from a psychological perspective. 8) Finding the balance between self and non-self in the conventional world.

August 29, 2020

1) Sharing of messages concerning the concept of non-self: the double edged nature of the delusion of self; the difficulty of overcoming the delusion; the promise of the Eightfold Noble Path. 2) Learning to integrate the conceptual knowledge into our experience through the process of meditation. 3) Meditating on aspects of the body. 4) Meditating on feelings. 5) Meditating on perceptions and mental formations. How we create a sense of self out of the stories we weave around our perception of our experience. 6) Meditating on consciousness itself.

September 5, 2020

1) The understanding of right thought as right intention, aspiration or resolve. 2) The linkage or continuity between right understanding, to right intention, to the transformation of how we live our lives through speech, action and livelihood. 3) The three forms of right intention: right renunciation, the intention of good will, and the intention of harmlessness. 4) Understanding right intention as illustrating the law of karma: the thought precedes the intention, the intention precedes the action, the action brings results in the world. 5) The difficulty of renunciation in the face of our ingrained habits and addiction to pleasure. 6) How to release ourselves from desire through the power of understanding. 7) Seeing the connection of desire with suffering, and the freedom from desire as happiness and peace.

September 12, 2020

1) Introduction to the Noble Eightfold Path. 2) The difference between right understanding and right thought. 3) The three forms of intention: working with craving and desire, working with ill will, and working with cruelty. 4) Understanding the great power of habit in the unfolding of our lives. Rupert Sheldrake and the power of morphic resonance. 5) How the power of our conditioned thoughts affect our actions. The logic of karma. 6) Distinguishing two kinds of thoughts. 7) Recognizing unwholesome patterns of thought. The difference between anger and ill will and greed. 8) How to overcome our addiction to pleasure. Understanding the meaning of renunciation as non-addiction. 9) The power of large and small addictions in our lives. 10) How to find balance or the middle way in our lives. 11) The ultimate message of the Dharma: how to be who we truly are.

September 19, 2020

1) Right thought: moving from cognition to intention in the karmic sequence. How actions unfold in our daily lives. 2) The three categories of right intention: renunciation, lovingkindness and compassion. 3) Understanding renunciation not as abnegation but as non-addiction. 4) The problem of addictions. Building awareness to develop restraint and moderation. 5) The film “The Social Dilemma” and its commentary on craving and suffering in contemporary society. 6) Bringing a sense of awareness to our likes and dislikes so they don’t result in suffering. 7) Developing a sense of wise restraint or moderation in our lives. Seeing the greater benefit of restraint rather than satiation of our desires. 8) Understanding the relationship between mindfulness and Buddhism. 9) It’s not what you do. It’s how you do it.

September 26, 2020

1) Right thought as the motivational aspect of bringing right understanding to overcoming craving, aversion and delusion. 2) Shifting our focus from craving to aversion. How we face the difficulties of what is happening in society with a sense of wisdom and compassion. 3) Example of working with food addiction. 4) The problem of aversion. Coming to terms with the political developments of our time. 5) Seeing the trajectories of Donald Trump and Joe Biden as the culmination of two diametrically opposed patterns of karmic development and how they represent the conflicting values in our society while not personally allowing ourselves to fall prey to aversion and hatred. 6) Understanding aversion and hatred from an inter-religious perspective, Muslims against Buddhists. 7) Using the positive aspects of action to bring about positive change short of succumbing to aversion, hatred and violence.

October 3, 2020

1) Seeing our contemporary social condition from the perspective of conventional and absolute reality. How to be in the world of suffering and not be in suffering ourselves. 2) An example of conventional and absolute reality: Sir David Attenborough and his film: A Life on This Planet. 3) The problem of hatred between Buddhists and Muslims. How not to fall into the trap of hatred. 4) How the self we create in response to our situation is an illusion, a product of our thoughts and our conditioning. 5) Understanding that seeing non-self, however, does not abnegate our responsibility to confront evil. How to confront hatred without falling prey to it ourselves. 6) Seeing renunciation as the cleansing of the mind and heart. 7) Learning how to renounce complexity or the tendency to build stories or drama around our experience. Avoiding prapanca or proliferation of mind. 8) Learning how to practice wise restraint. The wisdom of No. 9) Confronting the ignorance and hatred of our time with wisdom, compassion and lovingkindness.

October 10, 2020

1) Lovingkindness or metta, the second aspect of right thought. 2) Seeing lovingkindness as the antidote to hatred or ill will. The negative aspects of responding to hatred with hatred. 3) Lovingkindness: an intense feeling of selfless love for other beings. 4) Contrasting the feeling of metta with desire or attachment. 5) The development of a metta practice. Beginning with developing metta for ourselves and then shifting that basis of identity with others: the power of empathy. 6) The fundamental reality of the Buddha’s teaching: there is no difference between self and other. The challenge to be grounded in absolute reality. How we respond to the world depends on how we respond to ourselves. 7) The universal wish to be happy and free from suffering. How what we hold for ourselves, we share with all other beings. 8) The progression of metta from the self to others in one’s life. 9) How to make the transition from conventional the absolute reality in seeing the hatred and ill-will in today’s society. Learning how to communicate to reach a sense of commonality in our human experience. 10) Understanding the Dharma from a more evolutionarily advanced perspective and its connection to the teaching of metta.

October 17, 2020

1) Right thought as the motivational aspect of right understanding. 2) The three forms of right thought: renunciation, lovingkindness and compassion. 3) Whatever one thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of the mind: How what we think determines the direction of our lives. 4) People who radiate lovingkindness in our lives. 5) The unconditional nature of lovingkindness.

October 24, 2020

1) Review of the three kinds of right thought. 2) The relevance of lovingkindness in a time of political division, polarization and hatred. 3) How do we love someone whose values or behavior we cannot accept: learning how to take a larger perspective when looking at difficult people. 4) Seeing people in their basic humanity and not as particular individuals. 5) The actual practice of metta meditation. It’s not about the people to whom we direct metta. It’s about us. 6) The Buddha’s metta sutta. 7) Bringing the principles of metta in our daily work environment: a personal example. 8) Comparing the concept of forgiveness in a Christian context to lovingkindness in a Buddhist context.

October 31, 2020

1) Understanding that metta has nothing to do with others in our life, but in how we respond to our relationships. 2) The similarity between bringing metta into our relationships and understanding that suffering is not about blaming others but being accountable for the feelings we hold within ourselves. 3) Both lovingkindness and forgiveness have nothing to do with external circumstances but with the feelings we hold in ourselves. 4) Understanding metta not so much as a beautiful idea but as a practice that we bring into our lives. 5) The near enemy of metta, desire. Why it is so hard to perceive. Why so much of our relationships are built on desire and need rather than unconditional love. 6) Learning how to distinguish between love and desire in our relationships and daily lives. 7) Learning how to accept the reality of desire in our relationships while at the same time balancing our desire with unconditional love. 8) Seeing metta not so much as an absolute state, but as an aspiration that we bring into our lives in a conscious way.

November 7, 2020

1) Metta as one of the three aspirations of right thought: renunciation, lovingkindness and compassion….the three hallmarks of a spiritually evolved person. 2) The near enemy of metta: desire. How desire is embedded in the nature of our relationships and our ability to bring metta into our relationships. 3) Developing a metta practice: beginning to observe our feelings as moments of metta or compassion arise. 4) How to consciously cultivate a metta practice. extending metta to people in public places. 5) Emphasizing the aspect of kindness in our lives if not a sense of love. 6) How kindness and altruism is a natural instinct in toddlers and within ourselves. 7) Seeing the good in others and ourselves. Learning to relate to the good in other people or ourselves. 8) Changing our habitual mental habits in terms of how we respond to people around us from aversion and defensiveness to openness and acceptance. The neurological basis of habit formation. 9) What happens as a result of making a conscious decision to practice kindness in your life.

November 14, 2020

1) Comments and stories about recent political developments in the context of our discussion on metta or lovingkindness. 2) Cultivating lovingkindness: learning to see the good qualities in other people. 3) How we’re hard wired to look for danger in other people. Why we need to overcome our natural tendency toward caution and mistrust. 4) The relationship between mindfulness and lovingkindness. 5) Metta and the ability to release afflictive emotions and grudges sooner than later. 6) Practicing metta for those who may have caused us extreme levels of harm or suffering. 7) The idea that everything is perfect. The chain of causality in our lives is such that things could not have been any different from the way they are. That is the basis for acceptance and, ultimately, gratitude for our lives.

November 21, 2020

1) The meaning and position of right thought in the overall eight path factors of the Noble Eightfold Path. 2) The aspirational qualities of right thought and their recognition of our human frailties. 3) The opposite of compassion: cruelty, and how it plays out in our lives. Manifestations of hatred and cruelty in the world. The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and the roots of slavery and racism in our country. 4) Compassion is not only a feeling. It’s an act. 5) The difficulty of opening to our own suffering as well as the suffering of others. 6) How do we respond when we see the suffering of others? 7) Being mindful of our reactions to suffering both within ourselves or with others. 8) learning how to create a budget in our lives about how much compassion and resources we can afford to face suffering in the world. 9) Understanding compassion not as a beautiful concept but an actual practice that we bring into our lives. Making compassion the default action in our lives. 10) Compassion and equanimity: learning to let things in without drowning in the difficulties. Using mindfulness to be aware of our emotions without getting flooded by them. 11) Empathy or the ability to feel the suffering of others only happens when we understand our own suffering. 12) How to be more open to the suffering of others. 13) The challenge of empathy in an increasingly divided and polarized society.

December 5, 2020

1) The place and meaning of compassion as part of the Four Noble Truths. The three aspects of right thought: renunciation, loving kindness and compassion. 2) The reason for the importance of compassion in the Buddha’s teachings. The reason we don’t suffer in the world is because we don’t see it in ourselves. 3) The connection between compassion and awakening to suffering in our lives. 4) The reason for the centrality of compassion in the Mahayana traditions: compassion is the key to opening to our own suffering and opening to awakening and the liberation from suffering: the ultimate goal of the Four Noble Truths. 5) The social implications of the teaching: how so many people in our society who supported Donald Trump are in deep suffering…and why suffering pervades our society. 6) The interface between mindfulness and compassion, the importance of equanimity and empathy. 7) Learning how to be compassionate toward others. 8) Learning how to be compassionate to those who bring harm and cruelty to you. 9) How compassion expresses itself in great determination and great courage.

December 12, 2020

1) The placement of compassion or karuna in the Eightfold Noble Path and the Four Noble Truths. 2) The importance of compassion in the fade of the immense suffering in the world. 3) Compassion as a verb not a noun, as a practice that we bring into the world. 4) The difficulties of being compassionate toward ourselves. 5) The act of compassion is the path to awakening: the secret of the Four Noble Truths. 6) The problem of political division in our society: Trump supporters and the neurological basis for their sense of victimization, blame, hatred and retribution. The classical definition of suffering and the basis for compassion. 7) Examples of great compassion in the world. Finding our own capacity for compassion in our lives. 8) Understanding compassion in two ways: First to purify ourselves first to purify others; second, to practice true selflessness in the world. 9) Learning the selflessness or “emptiness” of compassion: compassion without any sense of self reference. 10) Learning to instill renunciation, loving kindness and compassion as guiding principles in our lives.

December 19, 2020

1) Two fundamental concepts underlying the teaching of right speech: (a) the unfolding structure of the Eightfold Noble Path as the description of the mechanics of how Karma unfolds in the world, and (b) the concept of right speech as a commitment to Truth as the fundamental basis for the process of spiritual awakening in our lives. 2) Right Speech as a moral imperative VS Right Speech as a purification of the mind. 3) Ethics as a form of moral restraint as in the West as opposed to ethics as as a means to achieve harmony in the world. 4) Ethics as a vehicle of non-self or anatta in the sense of finding that sense of common humanity that transcends differences and unites all humankind.

December 26, 2020

1) The fundamental importance of right speech in terms of its foundation in truth. The fundamental importance of truth in the whole spiritual process in terms of seeing things as they truly are. 2) How karma unfolds in our lives in terms of the relationship between our feelings, our thoughts, our speech, our actions and how we manifest in the world. The presence or absence of consonance and how it can lead to awakening or suffering. The fundamental importance of truth. 3) Morality and ethics and the sense of agency: the contrasting views of western and Buddhist thought. 4) Morality as less as a system of constraints, but as a purification of the mind that prevents negative emotions from arising and the promotion of harmony in the world. 5) The five forms of right speech: abstaining from false speech, abstaining from slanderous speech,abstaining from harsh speech and abstaining from idle chatter. 6) Abstaining from false speech and its implications for our current political situation.How alternative realities are created. 7) Understanding the commitment to truth as the manifestation of the truly spiritually realized life.

January 9, 2021

1) Sharing of feedback from the previous week concerning right speech and its political consequences. 2) Second letter concerning the question of agency and the life decision making process. 3) The relationships between right speech and the concept of truth. 4) How right speech can be obscured by desire or craving. 5) The personal, social, and political consequences of false speech. 6) The importance of examining our motivations when we speak an untruth.

January 16, 2021

1) The karmic basis for right speech and action: how we manifest in the world. 2) How false speech has created the political realities of the last four years. 3) How practicing right speech can be difficult in our lives. 4) learning to examine our motivations for false speech. Investigating our motivations as a process of self discovery and understanding. 5) Seeing how easy it is to speak untruths in our lives. 6) Understanding the fundamental commitment to truth in the Dharma and the practice. 7) The importance of understanding the truth of who we are at an absolute level and at a conventional level.

January 23, 2021

1) Review of false speech. 2) The negative and hateful consequences of slanderous speech. 3) Understanding that hateful speech is not about those who we blame, but because of our not getting what we want. So, the responsibility lies with us and not with others. 4) Learning to understand our emotions as we engage in hateful speech and learn restraint. Is our speech intended to bring people together or split them apart. 5) Noticing when our talk is overly self referential and what the motive may be.

January 30, 2021

1) The four types of wrong speech: false speech, slanderous speech, harsh speech, and useless speech. 2) Understanding hatred and aversion, the basis of slanderous speech, harsh speech, and hateful speech. 3) Seeing hatred or aversion as the mirror of craving or desire in the sense of wanting something not to be the way it is. So, anger is about not getting what we want and the tendency to blame people or circumstances rather than looking at the desire within ourselves. 4) The three forms of harsh speech: abusive speech, insults, and sarcasm. The karmic consequences of harsh speech. 5) The ideal antidote to harsh speech: patience. 6) Learning how to practice right speech. The importance of communication and how you speak to people reveals what is in your heart. 7) Learning the importance of listening. Bringing lovingkindness and compassion into how we communicate with others. 8) A story about practicing right speech in the face of difficult people.

February 6, 2021

1) Learning to let go of our despair and anguish over the course of world events in Burma and America. 2) Review of the four forms of speech through quotations of the Buddha from the sutras. Wrong speech, slanderous speech, and harsh speech. 3) The negative consequences of useless or frivolous speech. Restrictions on speech in the monastic context and the necessity for small talk in lay situations. 4) The influence of modern technology and social media on frivolous speech. 5) Observing mindfulness of speech in our daily life activities at home, work and in our daily interactions. 6) The fundamental importance of truth in the Dharma and why Buddhism is consistently corroborated by science. 7) Why we should be so grateful that things were not worse on January 6th, 2021.

February 13, 2021

1) Sharing of two messages concerning right speech and its connection to contemporary politics in America. 2) Understanding right action as a logical outcome of right understanding and right thought. 3) Understanding our everyday behavior as part of a spiritual practice. 4) The importance of finding our moral compass in this time of confusion and polarization. 5) Understanding the difference between sin or right and wrong and the concept of consequences or karma: the defining difference between Buddhism and the Abrahamic traditions. 6) The three forms of right action: abstaining from killing, abstaining from stealing, and abstaining from sexual misconduct. 7) The relationship between the path factors and the five precepts. 8) Abstaining from the taking of life.

February 20, 2021

1) Understanding Right Action as part of the Eightfold Noble Path. 2) The definition of Right Action: Abstaining from activities that cause harm to one’s self or others. Abstaining from taking life, stealing, and sexual misconduct. 3) Abstaining from killing: the definition of the taking of life. 4) The three variables determining the moral consequence of the taking of life: the object, the motive, and the effort. 5) Looking at the karmic consequences of killing from a larger moral context including a personal moral account within the context of a larger moral order. The fundamental understanding of the Dharma as a moral and ethical system based on ahimsa, or non-harming. 6) The question of suicide: the taking of one’s own life. How to understand it in a karmic context. 7) The question of vegetarianism vs eating meat. 8) The positive counterpart to taking life: the development of kindness and compassion for other beings. The expression of the moral life. 9) The killing of animals for sport. 10) The killing of insects. 11) Understanding our lives within the context of a moral universe.

February 27, 2021

1) Review of the concept of karma and its relationship to the taking of life. Understanding the consequences of our actions. The teaching of Bikkhu Bodhi. 2) The variables of subject, object, intention and intensity of the act in the determination of karmic weight or consequences. 3) Understanding karma as a moral ledger, the pervasiveness of killing and death in our lives, and how we all carry karmic consequences in our lives. 4) Responding to questions about karmic consequences in our daily life decisions: having thoughts about killing; contemplating suicide, the question of abortion. 5) The foundation of the Dharma: ahimsa, do no harm to one’s self or to others. 6) The fundamental principle of the protection and reverence for life. The fundamental principles of the Vedic traditions upon which the moral order of Buddhism was built. 7) Understanding the karmic ledger as a moral and ethical system designed to nurture the sustenance of life for all sentient beings. Learning how to live as part of nature. 8) Appreciating the inherent justice embedded in a system of karmic reward and punishment. 9) Contrasting Buddhism with the Abrahamic traditions of Christianity and Islam. 10) Finding a sense of freedom, confidence and peace by living in the flow of nature.

March 6, 2021

1) The relevance of the concept of karma to the Four Noble Truths. 2) The reason for right action or abstaining from killing, stealing and sexual misconduct in terms of the karmic consequence of these actions. 3) Understanding the world view out of which the idea of karma emanates and its importance in defining the Dharma. 4) Bhikkhu Bodhi and the definition of non-killing and the degree of karmic consequence. 5) How life and death is part of our lives and no one is free from death or killing. The notion of a moral karmic ledger for individuals and an interconnected karmic network for how we affect others and they affect us. 6) Understanding our physical biological selves as a process of birth and death: the definition of metabolism. 7) The historic roots of the law of karma in Indian Vedic culture and the central principle of ahimsa: do no harm. Understanding the law of karma as a system based on the reverence for life: the essence of the law of nature. 8) The primacy of the individual and the primacy of the group: the idea of self and non-self. 9) Four fundamental characteristics of this moral order: Justice, Compassion, Impermanence, and Agency. 10) Justice: No deed, good or bad is unnacounted for. It is a system of merits and demerits based on our actions. 11) Compassion: A system that takes into consideration our intentions, even for unskillful actions. 12) Impermanence: It acknowledges the passage of things. All things, including ourselves, arise and pass away. Coming to an understanding of death in our lives. 13) Agency: We create and are responsible for how our lives unfold. There is no one or thing outside of ourselves who is responsible for our suffering or our happiness. 14) The Dharma is a moral and ethical code for understanding our life and actions. It is not a religious system based on beliefs and obedience to an external authority of any kind. 15) Understanding our existence in the karmic moral order as the foundation for the meaning of love and compassion…the ultimate expression of our interconnectedness. 16) Drawing on the power of the Dharma to empower our lives.

March 13, 2021

1) Review of the place of right action within the Four Noble Truths. 2) The significance of the karmic consequences of our acts. 3) Understanding the negative and positive aspects of karma…the complexity of determining karmic outcomes…the concept of a moral order in which we live…the fundamental importance of Ahimsa or non-harming. 4) The roots of the concept of a karmic moral order within the ancient Vedic traditions of India. 5) The foundation for the concept of Ahimsa, the unfolding of the natural order or Nature. 6) Four basic characteristics of this karmic moral order: justice, compassion, impermanence, and agency. 7) The question of what is sacred and divine in the karmic moral order as opposed to the Abrahamic traditions. Is Buddhism just basically a secular system of morality and ethics? 8) Understanding the concept of the sacred in the context of the Dharma: the omnipresent flow of life itself as it manifests in our lives. 9) Coming into the Sacred through the stilling of our discursive thoughts. Mindfulness as a sacred presence. 10) Finding a balanced relationship between our conventional lives and our sacred presence. 11) Finding similarities between the Dharma and the contemplative traditions of the Abrahamic religions. 12) The problem of the abnegation of accountability in modern society.

March 20, 2021

1) Reflection on the meaning of “Resurrection” on Easter weekend and its correspondence to the idea of awakening in the Dharmic tradition. 2) Sharing of an email concerning our recent discussion of racism against Asian Americans. Expressing our common humanity as human beings. 3) Return to the discussion of right action or non-killing. 4) Learning to have compassion for all sentient beings. 5) Seeing the nature of intentions prior to our actions and their karmic weight, as well as the moral quality of the person committing the act and the recipient of the act. 6) Understanding our actions as symptoms of deeper conditioned habit patterns of thinking that drive our actions. 7) Giving life as opposed to taking life: learning how to be totally present for other sentient beings. How we exist in a mutually interactive karmic network with other beings and its effect on us and society. 8) Finding the wisdom, compassion and love to face the suffering in our own society.

April 3, 2021

1) Reflection on the meaning of “Resurrection” on Easter weekend and its correspondence to the idea of awakening in the Dharmic tradition. 2) Sharing of an email concerning our recent discussion of racism against Asian Americans. Expressing our common humanity as human beings. 3) Return to the discussion of right action or non-killing. 4) Learning to have compassion for all sentient beings. 5) Seeing the nature of intentions prior to our actions and their karmic weight, as well as the moral quality of the person committing the act and the recipient of the act. 6) Understanding our actions as symptoms of deeper conditioned habit patterns of thinking that drive our actions. 7) Giving life as opposed to taking life: learning how to be totally present for other sentient beings. How we exist in a mutually interactive karmic network with other beings and its effect on us and society. 8) Finding the wisdom, compassion and love to face the suffering in our own society.

1) The difficulty of talking about sexual misconduct: because it touches on our most fundamental human reproductive instinct and influences our behavior as human beings. 2) Looking at our sexual behavior with a sense of honesty and inquiry. 3) The definition of sexual misconduct: the writings of Bhikkhu Bodhi. 4) The basic purpose of moral behavior: to prevent personal suffering, to cause no harm, and preserve the institution of marriage and family. 5) Learning about sexual desire as pure energy in the body through the process of meditation. 6) Sexual restraint as a way to protect the family and the community. 7) How we face our relationship to sexuality in our lives. Understanding our sexuality as a fundamental part of who we are as human beings and not letting it control us.

April 24, 2021

1) Brief review of the eight path factors. 2) Right livelihood: the writing of Bhikkhu Bodhi. 3) The five prescribed occupations. 4) The qualities of right behavior for employees and employers. 5) The Buddha’s teaching in a modern political context. 6) Applying the concept of right livelihood to our personal lives. Occupations to avoid. 7) Learning to fulfill the aspiration of service to others. 8) Adjusting to jobs that may not fulfill our highest aspiration for ourselves. 9) Adjusting our relationship to money and wealth. 10) Developing a “kind heart” in our service to others. 11) Learning to live out the principles of the Dharma in our thoughts, speech, actions and livelihoods. 12) Understanding living in a democracy like ours is a privilege and not an entitlement.

May 15, 2021

1) The importance of effort, mindfulness, and concentration as the foundation for wisdom. 2) How effort, mindfulness, and concentration work together. The role of energy. 3) On this path, each person works out his or her own deliverance. 4) Meditation as mental cultivation, taming our uncontrolled minds and claiming our own power in our own spiritual liberation. 5) The four tasks: Preventing unwholesome states that have not arisen, preventing unwholesome states that have arisen; encouraging wholesome states that have not arisen, and perfecting wholesome states that have arisen. 6) Preventing the arising of unwholesome states that not yet arisen: the defilements or kilesas. 7) The path to spiritual maturity lies within ourselves, not within any external source. 8) Learning to work with negative emotions: looking at our own minds, applying mindfulness in our encounter with sense objects. 9) The unfolding of our experience in mind moments: the illusion of continuity. 10) How mindfulness cuts into our automatic response to our experience.

May 22, 2021

1) Right effort: preventing the arising of negative emotions: preventing unarisen unwholesome emotions. 2) Utilizing mindfulness in working with negative emotions: seeing the mind unfolding in a stream of thought moments. 3) Understanding the power of conditioning in our subjective response to our experience and the power of mindfulness. 4) The concept of Dependent Origination and its similarity to the idea of how thoughts and experience arise in the mind. 5) The razor of mindfulness: cutting through the reality of our experience and our subjective conditioned response to our experience.

May 29, 2021

1) The four forms of effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome thoughts that have not yet arisen. 2) Meditation and the prevention of negative emotions and the relationship to the teaching of dependent origination. 3) Elaboration of the concept of karma or the nature of the consequences of our thoughts and actions. 4) Understanding how latent unwholesome emotions can arise given the right conditions. 5) Learning to exercise mindfulness in the face of unwholesome emotions.

June 5, 2021

1) Sadness and grief as a form of suffering. 2) The solitude of each person’s karmic journey, our solitary journey of life. 3) Addressing unwholesome emotions that have arisen, the teaching of Bhikkhu Bodhi. 4) The five principal hindrances: desire, ill-will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt. 5) Methods of addressing desire: meditating on impermanence. 6) Working with ill-will and anger: invoking loving kindness and compassion. 7) Sloth and torpor: methods of energizing the mind and body. 8) Restlessness and worry: methods of calming the mind. 9) Doubt: using the mind to investigate the blockages and hindrances in meditation and in our lives.

June 19, 2021

1) The four forms of Right Effort. 2) The fundamental importance of mindfulness in the practice. How mindfulness works in the brain. 3) Methods for counteracting negative emotions: invoking the opposite emotion. 4) Invoking moral shame or moral dread. 5) Deliberately diverting our attention from negative thoughts. 6) Turning our attention to and investigating the negative mind state itself.

June 26, 2021

1) The Eightfold Noble Path: how right understanding brings a sense of morality and ethics into our lives and the role of meditation in the process. 2) Mindfulness as the primary factor in the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. 3) The quality of presence of mind, a certain kind of awareness described as bare attention. Not being blinded by our conditioned ways of interpreting our experience. The example of flow in our daily lives. 4) The simplicity of opening up to the simple richness of our everyday multidimensional field of experience. 5) How we create an illusion of our experience through our conditioning and believe that to be reality. 6) How to sit with the discomfort of not knowing and our strategies for avoiding negative emotions. 7) The error of identifying with our experience. We are not our thoughts. 8) How to wake up from being lost in thought. 9) The Dharma as an alternative paradigm to the Darwinian struggle for survival that defines our lives.

July 10, 2021

1) Understanding mindfulness as based on one’s experience and not an abstract, intellectual teaching. 2) Mindfulness as complete presence of mind, attentiveness, or awareness. 3) What makes mindfulness different from our normal mode of consciousness? The concept of “bare attention.” 4) The concept of illusion. How we do not see reality as it truly is. The roots of mental proliferation: the five defilements. 5) The task of meditation to quiet our discursive mind. Mindfulness as a process of undoing our tendency to mental proliferation. 6) The two forms of mindfulness leading to serenity or to wisdom. How the Buddha developed mindfulness through his early training in meditation. 7) An example of facing a negative emotion in the mind. 8) The ultimate consequence of delusion and ignorance.

July 1, 2021

1) The definition of illusion in the Buddha’s teaching. 2) The technical definition of mindfulness as seeing our experience with a mind that is totally still. 3) The Four Foundations of Mindfulness: mindfulness of the body, sensations, and mental formations. 4) Mindfulness of the body: awareness of the breath in the body. 5) Bringing mindfulness into other body positions: walking, standing, sitting, lying down. Bringing mindfulness into every action of daily life with flow. 6) Mindfulness with clear comprehension: Understanding the purpose of any action, the suitability of any action, the clarity of mind in action, and free of any controlling ego entity. 7) Understanding how our actions are influenced by our conditioned egoic responses to our experience. Bringing flow into our daily lives.

July 24, 2021

1) The four basic forms of mindfulness. 2) Bringing mindfulness into our everyday momentary activity and the psychological concept of Flow. 3) Meditation on the unattractiveness of the body. 4) How words, language, and thoughts describe reality but do not represent reality itself: the elements of illusion. 5) The wonder, beauty, and epiphany of seeing reality as it truly is.

July 31, 2021

1) The movie “Matrix” and its similarity to the state of unconsciousness described by the Buddha. 2) Mindfulness as the seventh of the eight Path factors. 3) Mindfulness of the parts of the body or unattractiveness of the body. How we don’t see things as they really are. 4) How our collective delusion will eventually destroy our species and our planet if we don’t change our understanding of what we are and our relation to the environment. 5) Mindfulness of the elements of the body. Seeing our body as a system of physical and mental processes. 6) Cemetery meditations. Seeing impermanence in the body. 7) How our conventional view of ourselves and the world causes suffering and destruction of our environment. The relevance of the Buddha’s teaching to today’s social and environmental crisis.

August 21, 2021

1) The “hedonic quality” of feelings. The role of feeling in consciousness itself. 2) The six sense doors or portals of cognition into the world. 3) How feelings trigger the latent defilements in the body. 4) How to break the link between feeling and the defilements: the role of mindfulness. The sharing of a personal experience. 5) Experiencing feelings without a sense of self being involved: the role of bare attention. 6) Shifting from attention to the content of feelings to the process of feeling itself. Seeing the flow of feelings as impermanent. 7) Understanding feelings as a natural by-product of the context in which we live, our karmic context or cause and effect, and not a product of a sense of self.

August 28, 2021

1) Mindfulness of mental formations: the common view of the mind as a stable, permanent, perceptual faculty and the countervailing Buddhist view of the mind as a series of discreet cognitive events with no stable, permanent observer. 2) A single moment of awareness as citta; and the feeling tones accompanying awareness as cetasika. 3) Noting mental states as happening by themselves as a result of circumstances and not referring to any self or person. 4) How not to feel invested in our mind states. The clarity of vision that occurs at the more advanced stages of meditation. 5) The teaching of the seventeen stages of sense door perception. 6) Seeing our experience through the lens of pure awareness without getting caught up in papanca or mental proliferation. 7) The story of the film: My Teacher the Octopus. The challenge of the Dharma in this age of difficulty for humankind and the planet.

September 4, 2021

1) The definition of spiritual maturity from a Theosophical perspective and the role of meditation. 2) The definition of samadhi or concentration according to Bhikkhu Bodhi. 3) The difference between samadhi and the concentration needed by a soldier in battle to kill or be killed. 4) The two characteristics of samadhi: prolonged focussed concentration and tranquillity of mind. 5) The qualities of a mind untrained in concentration and how concentration softens and makes the mind more pliable. 6) Understanding meditation as an altered state of consciousness. 7) Concentration as an accurate reflector of reality as it truly is, not as we normally experience it.

September 11, 2021

Right concentration as part of the Eightfold Noble path.
Understanding the distinction between Samatha or concentration meditation and Vipassana or mindfulness meditation and how it reflects the evolution of the Buddha’s journey.
The forty different kinds of objects used in concentration practice.
The four Brahmaviharas: lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
The importance and primacy of the breath as a meditative object.
September 18, 2021

1) The importance of concentration practice in the training of the Buddha 2) The beginning of the training for a dedicated practitioner. 3) Description of the normal meditation process. Noting all distractions, letting them go and returning to the breath, over and over again. The difficulty taming our minds. 4) The arousal of the five hindrances: desire, aversion, sloth and torpor, restlessness and doubt. 5) The cultivation of the five concentration factors: initial application, sustained application, rapture, happiness, and equanimity. 6) Approaching access or neighborhood concentration. 7) Description of the eight jhanic stages. 8) Discovering our own potential and ability to access the jhanic states.

September 25, 2021

1) The aspiration to attain the jhanas in our personal practice and the importance of understanding the significance of the jhana practice in our lives. 2) What is the process like of getting into samadhi? 3) Learning the power of the mind in coming to terms with the tribulations of life… not having to be a victim of your own life. 4) Description of the four jhanas as given in the suttas and Bhikkhu Bodhi’s explanation. 5) Description of the four immaterial jhanas. 6) Description of the path of mindfulness developed by the Buddha in distinction from the concentration practices.

October 2, 2021

1) Why, as meditators, we should not be intimidated by the difficulty of achieving rarified states of concentration. 2) The power of a regular meditation practice in helping us navigate through our lives. 3) The redefinition of wisdom from a conceptual understanding to an experiential awareness of life. 4) The fundamental difference between concentration and insight: the inability of concentration to remove latent defilements in the mind. 5) The active role of ignorance in hiding us from the truth of our lives: not seeing impermanence, suffering and non self. 6) The irreducible power of wisdom based on insight. 7) The most profound delusion: the notion of self and the consequences in the world. 8) How to approach an understanding of non-self in the Dharma.

October 9, 2021

Topics Include: 1) Understanding the relationship between concentration practice and mindfulness practice. 2) Achieving a balanced appreciation for samatha or concentration practice in our lives. 3) Understanding the importance and power of samatha as a daily practice in our lives. 4) Understanding the aesthetic dimension of the practice…the opening of our six sense doors…understanding the concept of flow. 5) Cultivating a regular samatha practice in our lives…the ability to find silence in our lives. 6) Having the practice in our lives as a resource to face life’s tribulations.

October 16, 2021

1) The three forms of ignorance that prevent wisdom: seeing permanence in impermanence, seeking satisfaction in the unsatisfactory, and seeing a self in the selfless. 2) Seeing non-self through an examination of the five aggregates. 3) Seeing non-self through examining our six sense doors, their objects, the cognitive process, and the defilements that can arise as a result. 4) Seeing self in terms our relational structure, or as a conditioned response to prior causes, or karma. 5) The three universal marks of all experience: impermanence, suffering and non-self. 6) Understanding impermanence: the illusion of continuity. 7) Seeing impermanence, we see unsatisfactoriness or suffering. And, seeing impermanence, we cannot perceive any form of self. 8) Through understanding of our conditioned existence, breaking through to the unconditioned state of Nibbana.

October 2, 2021

1) Understanding how understanding the essential truth of the Dharma leads to awakening. 2) The fundamental wisdom of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non-self. 3) Seeing the complexity and dynamic nature of impermanence. How our bodies and minds are a constantly changing shifting phenomenon. 4) Seeing impermanence as the basis for unsatisfactoriness or suffering. Seeking happiness in delusory expectations of permanence and stability. 5) Learning to make the most of what we have because everything is impermanent. 6) Understanding that if everything is impermanent, then there is no stable, permanent essence behind anything, and there is no way to control what is happening in our mind and body. 7) Finding ultimate freedom: no longer being controlled by our mind…not identified with our thoughts. 8) Accepting the fact of impermanence, but finding fulfillment and happiness in the precious time that we have on this earth. 9) Summary of the four stages of awakening. What does it mean to be an Arahant? 10) Understanding the structure of Buddhist teaching from a historical perspective. What the true meaning of awakening is.

November 6, 2021

1) What is the Absolute Reality of which we are a part? 2) The traditional explanation of the Dharma as being the process of Nature itself. 3) The definition of the Unconditioned as a description of the quality of our mind rather than a description of our place in a larger external reality. 4) The fundamental role of conditioning in our development…what ties us to our conditioning, desire and attachment…and the role of self, or identification with our conditioning, which ties us to suffering. 5) The characteristic of the conditioned mind….the mind attached to our experience through desire and sense of identification with self. 6) The unconditioned mind sees our five aggregates as transient, imperfect, and ownerless. It sees the conditions that define our lives, how we are the product of karma, and selfless nature of phenomena. Knowing this, the mind becomes free. 7) The power of wisdom in freeing us from suffering.

November 13, 2021

1) Sharing of an email message concerning what it means to have hope in the world today. 2) The “classical” curriculum in terms of how awakening is taught in the Theravadin context. 3) The four stages of awakening: stream entry, once returner, non-returner, and arahant. 4) How the stages are defined in terms of the number of rebirths into the human realm. 5) How the stages are defined in terms of the overcoming of the ten defilements: 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) Developing a mature perspective for ourselves in terms of understanding the breadth of the practice and our place along the spiritual path.

November 27, 2021

1) Review of the four levels of awakening in the Theravadin tradition. 2) The two sets of criteria for determining progress through the four stages of awakening: the number of rebirths in the round of samsara and the eradication of the ten defilements. 3) Description of the four stages of awakening in Bhikkhu Bodhi’s The Eightfold Noble Path. 4) Seeing all conditioned existence as the stamp of unsatisfactoriness. 5) Becoming the embodiment of the Four Noble Truths in our lives. 6) Overcoming the subtle sense of self at the Arahant level. 7) The statement of final awakening. 8) Why this knowledge is important to us in our spiritual journey. The fundamental issue in the journey to self liberation. 9) Understanding the radical revolutionary message of the Buddha.

December 4, 2021

1) The basic meanings of the Pali word, sati, or mindfulness. 2) Mindfulness as a full sustained presence to experience, fundamental mental strength. 3) Mindfulness as a guard of the sense doors. 4) Mindfulness as calling to find what is skillful and what is unskillful. 5) Mindfulness as the ability to see things as they truly are. 6) Mindfulness as a balancing element in the five enabling factors. 7) Mindfulness as the path spiritual awakening and as the basis for mental health. 8) Understanding mindfulness as a way to face our lives with openness, wisdom and acceptance, and how to live a good life.

Recorded May 26, 2018

1) The seven factors of awakening. 2) The four characteristics of mindfulness. 3) The first characteristics of mindfulness: the ability to establish and maintain a stable awareness. 4) Mindfulness as a skill based activity. 5) Mindfulness as a form of emotional intelligence and basic psychological intelligence. 6) The second characteristic: the quality of standing near and guarding the mind. 7) Understanding how the thought is not the thinker. 8) Why we don’t see reality as it truly is: the delusory nature of thought.

Recorded June 2, 2018

1) The four characteristics of mindfulness. 2) The third characteristic: Understanding the moral implications of skillful and unskillful thoughts and actions. 3) The concept of hire and ottapa, or moral shame and moral dread. 4) Understanding the fundamental importance of morality and this in the Buddha’s teaching. 5) The fourth characteristic: Seeing things as they truly are. 6) Why we don’t see the world as it actually is: the nature of bare attention.

Recorded June 9, 2018

1) The seven factors of awakening; 2) The four characteristics of mindfulness; 3) The fourth characteristic: seeing things as they truly are. 4) We we don’t see reality as it truly is: the four layers of illusion. 5) How we see reality as it truly is: bare awareness and clear comprehension. 6) The concept of bare awareness. 7) How mindfulness attenuates afflictive emotions. 8) The true basis for the transformative power of mindfulness.

June 30, 2018

1) The seven factors of awakening: mindfulness, investigation, energy, rapture, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. 2) The four qualities of mindfulness: presence of mind, guardian of the sense doors, knowing what is skillful and unskillful, seeing reality as it truly is. 3) The two aspect of seeing reality as it truly is: bare awareness and clear comprehension. 4) Clear comprehension: seeing things from all sides or different perspectives. 5) Recognizing the suitability and timing of an action. 6) Knowing the proper domain of our mind. 7) Understanding the perfection in all things.

Recorded July 14, 2018

1) Review of the seven factors of awakening. 2) The four aspect of mindfulness. 3) Investigation or truth discerning wisdom. 4) What wisdom reveal: the three universal characteristics of experience: impermanence, suffering and non self. 5) Understanding non self as impermanent transitory psycho physical processes. 6) Overcoming fear and seeing investigative wisdom as the vehicle for awakening.

Recorded July 21, 2018

1) Review of the seven factors of awakening. 2) The four aspect of mindfulness. 3) Investigation or truth discerning wisdom. 4) What wisdom reveal: the three universal characteristics of experience: impermanence, suffering and non self. 5) Understanding non self as impermanent transitory psycho physical processes. 6) Overcoming fear and seeing investigative wisdom as the vehicle for awakening.

Recorded July 28, 2018

1) The seven factors of awakening. 2) The five areas of investigative inquiry: our thinking process itself; intentions and motivations; emotions; cause and effect or karma; the nature of the awakened mind. 3) Investigating skillful and unskillful thoughts, words and actions.

Recorded August 11, 2018

Topics Include: 1) Review of the Seven Factors of Awakening. 2) Areas of Investigation: our mental landscape; the power of intention; emotions; cause and effect or karma; the awakened mind itself. 3) The significance of samadhi as a state of awakened mind. 4) Two kinds of suffering: one that leads to more suffering and one that leads to awakening. 5) Cutting through the delusion of self through the understanding of identification.

Recorded August 18, 2018

1) The five areas for spiritual investigation: our mental landscape, the power of intention, emotions, karma or cause and effect, and the awakened mind itself. 2) Using the mind to investigate skillful and unskillful actions and afflictive emotions. 3) Investigating personality structures: the greed type, the aversive type, the delusory type. 4) the underlying theme of self and non self through how we identify with our thoughts and emotions. 5) Understanding mind and body, or nama rupa. 6) Understanding “self” as a linguistic construct, an artifact of grammar. 7) The illusion of form, language, and the construction of the ego.

Recorded September 1, 2018

Connecting the teaching of mind and body to the stages of awakening. 2) The underlying theme of the teaching: non self or anatta. 3) Understanding body and mind in the context of non self; the power of identification; and examples of modern research. 4) How we create a self out of our experience. 5) The illusion of form, language and thought. 6) Linking mind and body to cause and effect. 7) The third insight knowledge: the three characteristics of existence, impermanence, non self and suffering. 8) The fourth insight knowledge: rise and fall; seeing impermanence in all things.

Recorded September 8, 2018

The concept of energy, or viriya, and its many translations in English. 2) Viriya as energy or the capacity to accomplish things. 3) Viriya as the capacity to shore things up. 4) Viriya as strength. 5) The use of viriya for wholesome and unwholesome purposes. 6) Viriya as courage. 7) Finding that sense of purpose and direction that can guide and drive our lives. 8) Does spiritual and material accomplishment in our lives depend on our own efforts or is the product of divine intervention.

Recorded September 15, 2018

The question of energy and its importance in achieving our goals. 2) Achieving our goals and the question of divine intervention. 3) Distinguishing skillful and unskillful use of energy. 4) The five enabling factors: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and understanding. 5) Understanding out to strategically use energy in our practice and life. 6) Understanding the role of sleep in energizing our waking hours. 7) How we can live a better life by understanding our use of energy.

Recorded September 22, 2018

1) Review of the discussion on energy or viriya. 2) How expenditure of energy can create energy. 3) Techniques to bolster energy during meditation. 4) Opening to the wonder and beauty of our experience and feeling inspiration and energy. 5) Finding balance of energy in our practice. 6) Understanding the cause that drives effort: spiritual urgency. 7) Reflections on the causes of spiritual urgency: the preciousness and rarity of our presence circumstance; the certainty of death.

Recorded September 29, 2018

1) Review of the discussion on energy or viriya. 2) How expenditure of energy can create energy. 3) Techniques to bolster energy during meditation. 4) Opening to the wonder and beauty of our experience and feeling inspiration and energy. 5) Finding balance of energy in our practice. 6) Understanding the cause that drives effort: spiritual urgency. 7) Reflections on the causes of spiritual urgency: the preciousness and rarity of our presence circumstance; the certainty of death.

Recorded October 5, 2018

1) Introduction to spiritual urgency. 2) Reflections of Ron Kodama on his one month retreat. 3) Developing a long term plan for your meditation practice. 4) Further reflections on spiritual urgency: the futility of accumulation in this life. 5) Facing the consequences of our actions at the end of our lives. 6) Recognizing the preciousness of this life and our opportunity for awakening. 7) Understanding the defects of samsara and the importance of viriya.

Recorded October 13, 2018

1) Understanding the significance of rapture and bliss or piti. 2) Learning to appreciate moments of happiness in our lives. 3) How experiencing piti enhances our engagement with our experience. 4) Distinguishing between piti, rapture and such, or happiness. 5) Distinguishing between worldly and non worldly rapture. 6) Piti that comes from understanding and inquiry. 7) Understanding the transformative effect that piti can have in our lives.

Recorded October 20, 2018

1) Introduction to the seven factors of awakening. 2) Review of rapture and bliss. 3) Understanding the eight levels of jhanic absorption. 4) How the Buddha transformed the jhanic practices into mindfulness. 5) Bringing the cultivation of samadhi to our lay practitioner level: recognizing piti and sukha. 6) The four preliminary levels of rapture.

Recorded October 27, 2018

1) How the Buddha used the jhanic practices to attain awakening. 2) Understanding the preliminary levels of concentration leading to jhana. 3) The five levels of access concentration. 4) The five enabling faculties: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom. 5) Personal experiences with samadhi practice. 6) How deep samadhi can affect our proprioceptive sense of the world. 7) The dangers of rapture: how we can get attached to pleasant feelings. 8) Understanding the skillful use of rapture and bliss.

Recorded November 3, 2018

1) Review of the discussion on rapture and bliss. 2) Understanding the role of pleasure in our lives. 3) Understanding rapture and bliss within the context of the larger spiritual journey. 4) Learning to discern what is the path and what is not the path: how we related to our experience. 5) Attaining joy in overcoming our hindrances and afflictive emotions.

Recorded November 10, 2018

1) Reflections on the Buddha,Dharma and Sangha. 2) How piti or rapture arises. 3) Reflections on one’s silk or morality. Understanding non-harming or ahimsa. 4) Finding joy and happiness in refraining from unskillful actions and committing skillful action. 5) Find happiness in coming to truly appreciate who we are and what we are committed to in the world.

Recorded November 24, 2018

1) Reflections that bring about piti or joy: On the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and on sila, or morality. 2) The reflection on generosity; appreciating our basic sense of generosity. 3) Reflection on the devas, or inhabitants of the heavenly realms. 4) Learning to find rapture and bliss in our own daily lives; finding random moments of joy and happiness in lives.

Recorded December 1, 2018

1) Review of the reflections: on sila or morality, and on generosity. 2) Understanding the difference between mundane merit, or merit based on desire for good results, and supra mundane merit, or merit based on freedom from attachment. 3) Reflecting on inner peace. Noticing those moments when we are released from afflictive emotions. 4) Understanding the concept of peace as part of the Buddhist presence in the world. 5) Learning how to cultivate happiness in our lives. 6) Using the metaphor of a vehicle to understand self and non-self.

Recorded December 15, 2018

1) Reviewing the first four factors of awakening: mindfulness, investigation, energy, and rapture. 2) Mindfulness, the foundation of the seven factors. 3) Mindfulness as the condition for investigation to arise. 4) Understanding how mindfulness works in terms of working with the energy of afflictive emotions and, at a deeper level, understanding how these emotions arose. 5) Learning to differentiate the difference between skillful, wholesome and unskillful, unwholesome thoughts and actions. 6) Some personal stories of unskillful thoughts and actions.

Recorded December 22, 2018

1) The most important result of mindfulness and investigation is knowing the difference between wholesome and unwholesome actions. 2) Understand the role of energy in cultivating wise wholesome actions and abandoning unwholesome actions. 3) Using the five precepts as a basis for committing to a more wholesome and skillful life. 4) Understanding joy and rapture as arising from the energy we commit to living a more wholesome life. 5) Deriving joy and happiness in knowing we have made a commitment to living a moral and ethical life. 6) Understanding how everything we experience in life can be part of our practice, an opportunity for learning. 7) Understanding boredom as a form of greed. 8) Understanding the joy and happiness that comes from living a life of moral and ethical purity.

Recorded December 29, 2018

1) The definition of passadhi or calmness of tranquillity. 2) Seeing the connections between tranquillity and relaxation or the relationship between our physical state and what is happening mentally. 3) Understanding the relationship between calm and sincerity and moral rectitude of mind. 4) How we can use calm as an escape from reality rather than as a means to attain awakening. 5) How to work with the tranquillity factor in meditation. 6) Understanding the role of the relaxation sequence in developing a state of calm. 7) Integrating calm and tranquillity from our meditative practice into our daily lives.

Recorded January 19, 2019

1) The definition of passadhi or tranquillity. 2) The purpose of the relaxation sequence used in our meditation. 3) Overcoming a sense of striving or effort based on desire and craving rather than settling back into a sense of pure presence. 4) Finding a sense of composure and calm in movement…. walking meditation and examples in Japanese culture. 5) Learning how to be completely present in our experience.

Recorded January 26, 2019

1) Review of the factor of tranquillity, calmness or peacefulness of mind both as mental and physical states. 2) The importance of relaxation as a precursor to the attainment of concentration and samadhi. 3) Tranquillity in movement and in daily activities of life. 4) Learning how to know when the mind os calm and tranquil and when it is not. 5) Happiness, concentration and insight: the consequences of a tranquil state of mind.

February 2, 2019

1) What is the fundamental purpose of meditation and the role of concentration? 2) Understanding the relationship between concentration and insight in the meditation process. 3) Outlining the overall structure of jhanic attainment: the material jhanas and the formless jhanas. 4) The five elements of the jhanic process: vitakka, initial attention; vicara, sustained attention; piti, rapture; sukha, bliss; and ekkagata, one pointedness. 5) The description of the eight jhanic states. 6) The origins of the Mahasi lineage based on his interpretation of the jhanic states.

February 9, 2019

1) Understanding the difference between concentration and mindfulness. 2) Review of the eight mundane and supra mundane jhanic states. 3) Understanding ekagatta or one pointedness of mind. 4) Learning how to train our monkey mind. 5) Two types of concentration: fixed object concentration and momentary concentration. 6) Understanding the practice in terms of our ordinary experience and gradual deepening levels of concentration: neighborhood and momentary concentration. 7) Understanding the relationship of momentary concentration in the path to chana or as an opening to vipassana insights or mindfulness. 8) Having the courage to look at ourselves as we really are.

February 16, 2019

1) Review of the two types of concentration of samadhi. The difference between fixed object concentration and multiple object concentration. 2) The second form of samadhi: brining the power of one-pointedness into the broader experiences of our daily lives. 3) Understanding the meaning of chana. Seeing the characteristics of phenomena through mindfulness. 4) Different teachings and interpretations of the concept of jhana.

February 23, 2019

1) Review of the major types of concentration: fixed object meditation, multiple object meditation, and one pointed attention to our daily life activities. 2) Understanding why samadhi is so important: how concentration leads to wisdom and understanding. 3) The importance of concentration in the overall path to awakening. 4) The first factor in the development of concentration: a pleasant abiding in the here and now. 5) The second factor in the development concentration: the supernormal powers or siddhis.

March 2, 2019

1) Discussion of concentration as the foundation for the meditation process. 2) Review of the two types of meditation: single object meditation and multiple object meditation. 3) The four ways of understanding concentration: First, a sense of pleasant abiding. Experiencing the joy of moment to moment experience, while avoiding craving and attachment. 4) The second teaching: the supernormal powers and the dangers of unskillful use. 5) The third teaching: using concentration to perceive impermanence. How we fall prey to the illusion of self in our thoughts. 6) The fourth teaching: seeing impermanence in all the five aggregates: matter and form, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. 7) Comparing single object meditation and multiple object meditation as a vehicle for awakening.

March 9, 2019

1) Review of the four characteristics of concentration: understanding concentration as a blameless form of happiness; the danger of the supernormal powers; understanding impermanence through concentration; and understanding human mortality through concentration. 2) Learning the fundamentals of concentration: developing confidence inner ability to achieve deep samadhi. 3) Understanding the underlying foundation for concentration: morality and ethics and a feeling of non-remorse. 4) Seeing the chain of causation where morality leads to non remorse, non remorse leads to happiness, happiness leads to concentration, and concentration leads to wisdom. 5) Understanding the positive value of remorse and the problem of non-remorse in our society.

March 16, 2019

1) Understanding the breath as the fountain for the meditation process. The four teachings of the Buddha on developing concentration. 2) The first teaching: being aware of the breath. Different methods for focussing on the breath. 3) Being aware of the difference between focussing on the breath and being caught up in our thoughts. 4) The second teaching: being aware of the quality of the breath. Learning to appreciate the level of refined attention required in the meditation process. 5) Understanding the four parts of the complete breath cycle. 6) Understanding our mental attitude as we observe the breath. 7) Seeing the importance of relaxation in our practice and in everyday life. 8) The third teaching: developing strong one pointedness of mind.

March 30, 2019

1) Review of the first two teachings on focusing on the breath. 2) The third teaching: feeling the whole body of the breath or feeling the breath in the whole body. 3) Understanding the nature of the breath cycle and how it leads into concentration. 4) The fourth teaching: understanding how the breath calms the bodily formations. Learning how to develop concentration out of a calm and tranquil mind. 5) Understanding the “beautiful breath.” 6) Understanding the transition from the awareness of the object to an awareness of the knowing mind…finding “normalcy of mind” or the “ordinary mind”. Coming to know the “knower” of our experience.

April 6, 2019

1) Review of the four teachings on focusing on the breath. 2) Confronting the ultimate obstacle of thought. Why is it that thought does not represent reality? How thoughts embody our patterns of conditioning. 3) What happens when our thoughts lead to beliefs and their consequences in the world. 4) The reality of self and other, polarization, division and conflict in society. 5) The illusion of form. Why we do not see the world as it truly is. How we see forms, identify them with words and create language that becomes our thoughts, and ultimately of sense of self. All of which are abstract, conceptual representations of reality, but not reality itself. 6) How thoughts then become the basis of our sense of self. The one who thinks the thoughts. The illusory nature of self. 7) The default mode network and how it reinforces the illusory sense of self. The Buddha’s definition of non-self. 8) So, how do we come to terms of our thoughts? Understanding the basic neutrality of thoughts and impact of how we react to our thoughts. The concept of the first and second darts. 9) Understanding thoughts within the context of Conventional and Absolute Reality. The dual nature of existence.

April 20, 2019

1) Working with thoughts in terms of concentration practice and mindfulness practice 2) Mindfulness is not about not thinking but being aware that we are thinking, what we are thinking, and what the consequences of our thoughts are. 3) Incorporating investigation into the mindfulness. The development of understanding and wisdom by knowing whether a thought is wholesome or unwholesome, skillful of unskillful. 4) The tendency of thoughts to disappear as we begin to note them. How we build stories around our thoughts because of our investment in the meaning of the thought. 5) Understanding the character of our thoughts and their meaning for who we are. Using the factor of investigation into the mindfulness. 6) Comparing the refinement of the mind to the refinement of gold. Understanding obvious and more subtle impurities of mind. 7) Developing tranquillity and stability of mind in the face of the tumult of the world around us. 8) The story of the first dart and the second dart: the cause of suffering.

April 27, 2019

1) Understanding the concept of equanimity. 2) Equanimity as part of the 25 beautiful mind states. 3) Equanimity as “neutrality of mind”. 4) Equanimity as “normalcy of mind.” 5) Equanimity as pure awareness or “citta” as opposed to awareness colored by emotions or feeling tones. 6) Knowing when our awareness is clear or when it is clouded by our conditioned thoughts. 7) How concentration leads to equanimity. 8) The “near enemy” of equanimity: indifference. 8) Why equanimity of one of the most powerful of the beautiful states of mind.

May 25, 2019

1) Understanding how we ring equanimity into our daily lives. Working with the eight worldly dharmas. 2) Understanding gain and loss. 3) Understanding praise and blame. 4) Understanding fame and disrepute. 5) Understanding pleasure and pain. 6) Understanding how our experience unfolds as a natural and lawful unfolding of cause and effect. 7) Understanding equanimity as a dynamic and creative force in working with our experience.

June 1, 2019

1) Equanimity as one of the four Brahmaviharas. 2) The two wings of the Dharma: wisdom and compassion, the mind and the heart. 3) Lovingkindness: near and far enemies. 4) Compassion: near and far enemies. 5) Sympathetic Joy: near and far enemies. 6) Equanimity: near and far enemies. 7) Equanimity as a sense of impartiality and balance.

June 8, 2019

1) The basic structure of the Buddhist cosmology, the process of awakening and the importance of equanimity. 2) The four stages of awakening: stream enterer, once returner, non returner, and arahant. 3) Understanding the Sixteen Stages of Awakening as the curriculum that ties the four stages together. 4) First four stages of emergence, opening and insight: the awakening to how things really are. 5) The next five stages: the stages of disenchantment and disillusion: fear, misery and desire for deliverance; the dark night of the soul. 6) Stage ten: knowledge of reconciliation: seeing all the previous stages as mind states. 7) Stage eleven: how equanimity results from our understanding of the true nature of our attachments and aversions. 8) How equanimity becomes the platform for awakening or cessation. 9) How the process repeats for the ensuing stages of awakening. 10) The importance of equanimity in the process of awakening and in our daily lives. 11) Seeing the unfolding human comedy with a deep sense of compassion, lovingkindness and equanimity.

June 22, 2019

1) The importance of equanimity in the spiritual process. 2) Equanimity as a factor in the stages of insight: the resolution of the joyous states of discovery and understanding and the darks states of transience and impermanence…a perfect balance of mind with no reactivity. 3) Equanimity as the last of the ten praxis or virtues: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, diligence, patience, truthfulness, resolve, lovingkindness and equanimity. 4) The primary importance of equanimity and patience. 5) Developing and strengthening equanimity in our practice…seeing a cup as already broken, not being attached to the fruits of our actions, the practice of acceptance.

June 29, 2019