Settling into mindfulness for the month long retreat. Approaching sounds, body sensations, and the breath as a home base, with ease, patience, and kindness of attitude.

The list of the Five spiritual Faculties - Faith, Energy, Mindfulness, Concentration and Wisdom - is a helpful way to understand the unfolding of practice. Each of these are important issues of practice and each can be seen to build on the next for the full flowering of the awakened heart/mind.

Includes device renunciation

As we begin the journey of a long retreat, it is helpful to consider different ways to frame our practice .I offered an overview with a diagram that depicted this, and how we might talk about our practice in meetings with teachers. This begins with the biggest frame - wise attitude or wise view, supported by our intentions and aspirations. the next frame is continuity of mindfulness that supports whatever practice or technique we might be cultivating.

Practicing metta for an easy being and for oneself, with an emphasis in establishing loyalty to be kind to yourself in all conditions.

In many discourses the Buddha gave very detailed instructions on how to develop Mindfulness of Breathing from our first awareness of breathing in and out through calming the mind into samadhi (concentration) and then steps to cultivate liberating insight. These 16 steps also include the cultivation of happiness and contentment as an aspect of the path to freedom.

An introduction to a careful and detailed practice of the 4 Elements meditation practice. Focusing on different kinds of body sensations, first independently and then in combination.

The elements of faith in ourselves.

Wise or Right Effort includes cultivating wholesome states and then maintaining and increasing them. This talk explores how to maintain and increase these states and the importance of consciously including them in our practice. Particular emphasis is on the power of investigation, as well as mindfulness.

Instruction and guided meditation on the 2nd foundation of mindfulness called vedana (feeling tone). This is the factor of each moment of consciousness which is pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. Being able to be mindful of vedana allows us to cut off our reactivity.

Discussion of a range of ways samadhi is understood and practiced, and a range of ways insight is practiced in relation to samadhi.

Continuing from the Anapanasati sutta we turn to vedana, the 2nd foundation of mindfulness. With great courage. we can develop contentment no matter the pleasure, pain or neutrality of any give moment. In not understanding vedana we are forever imprisoned by our wrong views. When we can breath consciously in a greater range of pain, pleasure and neutrality we find the path to non-conditional contentment.

Inviting our heart to let go of all reservations and conditions to universal friendliness and kindness. This heart which can hold all beings in kindness becomes a refuge for our own well being and the well being of others.

A guided practice for letting go of specific objects or sense doors to practice open or choiceless awareness. For some people this is a more natural way of practicing. The intent is to become mindful of one’s mental activity as it is drawn to different experiences arising at any of the six sense doors. From this practice you can gain insight into how the mind works and find freedom no matter what the experience.

The Buddha said that karma is all based on intention. In every moment we are sowing the seeds of suffering or happiness. In addition to this moment to moment aspect, intention also refers to a wider motivation—Clear Comprehension of Purpose—our aspiration and vision that fuels and inspires us to practice. Both of these dimensions of intention are explored.

Last Day of Morning Instructions

The seven factors of awakening develop and strengthen naturally as we practice, but knowing this map helps us incline towards them.

There are two larger categories of meditation: samatha meditations and vipassana meditations. Samatha meditations are intended to calm, unify, balance and develop strengths of the heart, and vipassana meditations lead toward insight into our patterns of suffering, confusion, clarity and freedom. The samatha meditations can develop to the point where we are fully absorbed into our meditation subject. This talk describes this process.

Big Mind/Big Sky Meditation Practice

The flow of experience that we experience as component parts of a sense of self, and how that is always appearing, changing, and disappearing.

Using every moment and all of life as our teacher. An overview of the 3 characteristics of existence.

Non-Greed, Non-Hatred and Non-Delusion were taught by the Buddha as the three roots of happiness. Stating each in a positive way they are 1) Letting go/Generosity, 2) Loving-Kindness and ClarityWisdom. Every moment that we're mindful we're cultivating these qualities. This talk explores both the moment-to-moment as well as the relational aspects of these three qualities.

The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths – the truths of suffering, the cause of suffering , the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering – not as a philosophy, but as practices that we can use here and now to understand why we suffer and how to find release. Using this template to gain insight into our lives can bring a radical shift to the way we relate to our experience.

To practice the divine abode of equanimity, we begin by reflecting on the need to be intimate with what is really happening. With this strength of heart we can soften our preferences and the fantasies they produce in order to bring out heart in steady contact with all unfolding phenomena.

A talk on the Buddha's Teaching of three roots of happiness: non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion. Stating each in a positive way they are 1) Letting go/Generosity, 2) Loving-Kindness 3)Clarity/Wisdom. As part of the talk I share some personal stories of how my different paths of Buddhism and the Hindu path of devotion converged around these three qualities.

Our hearts have the potential to develop common strengths into boundless beautiful qualities called Paramis (Paramitas).

What is the message of the great masters who've come before us? What are their teachings that can support and illuminate us as the living links in the unbroken chain of dharma practitioners since the Buddha's time?

When we practice equanimity towards the conditions around us, as well as towards the conditions arising in our own minds, it allows the mind/heart to see with clarity and act with kindness.