This talk explores the pervasiveness of the judging mind and how to work constructively with it through mindfulness, metta, understanding and inquiry.

What is the role of concentration on the Path... Why is it important, how to develop it on & off the cushion and what are the obstacles.

Guided by several key teachings, particularly how we might bring together wisdom, compassion, and courage, we explore some of the issues raised in reflection on the last ten years. A focus is the parallel between personal practice and responding to larger social issues.

Howard Thurman, the great African American activist, mystic, and theologian, once said: “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” In the spirit of this guidance, we continue exploring how to understand and respond some of the core issues related to the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. We are further guided by (1) understanding the inter-relationships between individual, relational, and collective domains of practice; and (2) taking wisdom, compassion, and courage (and responsiveness) as three touchstones of our practice, both more inner and more outer.

When you commit your life to practice, it's beyond personal benefit. You Allow what happens, you Offer your Life...

The essence of our practice is to learn ever better to respond rather than react to experience. Using the model of the "Ladder of Inference," we see how we, when reactive, move away from more direct experience-personally, inter personally and socially. We then explore practices to help us "get down."

Words, Metaphor and the Dance of Dharma

We look further at the mechanisms by which we move away from direct experience. unskillfully, driven by reactivity and papanca (conceptual proliferation). We point to practices of tracking thoughts, emotions, reactivity-that help us ground in more direct experience, leading to greater freedom and responsiveness-personally interpersonally, and collectively.

Building on the last two sessions, we explore three inter-related aspects of ignorance or confusion: 1. How we move away from direct experience, especially because of reactivity. 2. How we develop, personally and collectively, unconscious material;and 3. How we do not fully understand impermanence, the roots of suffering and the nature of the self. We suggest ways to practice with all three forms of ignorance.

What does it mean to see through the veil that clouds our perception and to sense, perceive and know the mystery in all it manifestations.

After reviewing the emphasis on grounding in more direct experience, we explore how to be skillful as we move away from indirect experience with our thinking, focusing on (1) having our thinking connected with direct experience and (2) using "views" wisely. Includes Q and A.

The Buddha taught about 4 kinds of attachment - one of those is attachment to views & opinions. This talk explores understanding views & how to work with our attachment to them.

We again review briefly the meaning of "getting down to direct experience" and then explore how to use concepts and views skillfully as we are somewhat away from direct experience.

A Dharma talk with Jack Kornfield and Pascal Auclair

Bodhisatva

In the context of the accelerating application of mindfulness in "secular" settings, we can ask questions about whether mindfulness is sometimes presented as a mere technique. We look at the nature of "nature" or "right mindfulness" (samma sati) and the importance of connecting mindfulness to the awakened heart, wisdom, and to ethics. In this talk, we focus especially on mindfulness and ethics.

What is the self, how is it constructed - Who do you take yourself to be. This talk explains how to examine the nature of self - the attachment to self image/identity & how a mindful relationship to it can bring much clarity & peace.

We continue to look at how mindfulness can be understood in the larger context of connection with ethics, wisdom, and the awakened heart. Here we explore how mindfulness and metta can be sometimes seen as separate, but how both practices point to a mature integration-loving awareness, mindful caring, the mindful and wise heart.

A seasonal teaching about innate luminosity and the practice of kindness.

(There is a long pause at the beginning) We complete our exploration of "mature" (or "right") mindfulness, focusing on how mindfulness may be disconnected from wisdom, how it can lead to wisdom, and how "mature" mindfulness is integrated with wisdom (as well as ethics and the awakened heart)

Sylvia and Cliff Saran discuss the neuroscience of consciousness.

At this time of earth's stillness, it can be a wonderful time to touch our deeper aspirations, correct with our visions, and set intentions. We do this through reflections, guided meditation and ritual.

We explore the nature of fear and how metta is a powerful resource to work with and transform fear.

The power of intention in sustaining your practice.

A brief outline of the Buddhist path to wholeness. Motivation, the three yanas, and non-duality.

We explore how our practice can come alive in the flow of daily life, focusing on some of the challenges as well as three areas: (1) Various supports for daily life practice, (2) the centrality of mindfulness of the body, and (3) taking difficulties and even suffering as opportunities for practice.

The Buddha's teaching on Papancha - the proliferating tendency of mind - obscures a natural freedom and peace. This talk explores how proliferation happens conditioned by desire, aversion, views and the sense of personal identity and how awareness is key in understanding this pattern and freeing it.

We continue to explore a number of ways to deepen practice in daily life, working with challenges difficulties, grounding in the body, working with intention, and practicing with speech and interaction as well as others.

Deep wisdom teachings use the language of poetry, metaphor and simile to point to the timeless truths. In this talk Mark shares examples of wisdom teachings from Buddhist sources throughout the ages.

The talk, given immediately following two weeks of silent practice, explores themes of remembering what is important, mystery, doing and being, and awareness "open like the sky," connecting how we practice both in retreat and daily life.

We explore the meaning of developing a love or loving kindness toward all, including one's "enemies," using both Christian and Buddhist resources. Four foundational practices are outlined: 1.Ffollowing ethical guidelines 2. Mindfulness 3. Metta, and 4. Wisdom practices to help contemplate emphathically the causes and conditions of difficult interactions.

With special guests: Jack Kornfield, Johan Wikman and Susan Felix.

The beautiful ways the Dharma is being spread across the world.

We continue to focus on perspectives and practices to help us practice skillfully with those who seem difficult or "enemies." We give attention to further practices and some of the subtleties and complexities.

Mindfulness of Life & Death

We bring in further practices and perspectives to help us work with "enemies" or "difficult persons" including various ethical, body, heart, and mind practices. We close by examining how we may sometimes project onto others our fragmented parts and thus use practice with enemies as opportunities to find greater wholeness.

How to awaken joy through mindfulness, awareness and inclining the mind to that which uplifts the heart...

What is the quality of awareness that facilitates a joyful presence and attitude toward experience that allows us to know the peace beyond the changing conditions of life?

Does the dharma depend on transcendental experience.

The unfolding of the inner life, body, heart and mind. The blessings of retreat.

What did the Buddha actually teach about mindfulness? How does it differ from a simple attention? This talk explores mindfulness in the context of the Buddhist Path and it leading from pain to peace.

We explore the metaphor of the "spiritual journey" to help illuminate phases of our practice, using three reference points: 1. Mary Oliver's poem, "The Journey" 2. The journey of the Buddha and 3. Our own individual journeys.

The mind makes many ideas, views & misconceptions about the process of waking up - this talk points to the importance of understanding that awakening is a process, not a state...

In the context of a unit to Occupy Oakland, reflections on the importance for our times of developing our lives to connect inner and outer transformation, and of the inspiration to be bodhisattvas.

We look at one of the primary training areas of a Bodhisattva, one who connects inner practice and helping others ethical practice. We consider an expansive understanding of the five lay precepts, and the challenges of ethical practices.

A Conversation with Tsoknyi Rinpoche- Open Heart, Open Mind

In the context of connecting inner and outer transformation, we explore how to train to be wise and skillful in using views, concepts, and theories.

Anata, non-self is one of the characteristics of experience; concepts are labels we use to map process to make it understandable. All is in process and interconnected.

Arinna Weisman and Shahara Godfrey

What is the path to genuine renunciation & release of that all which doesn't serve our happiness or awakening.

Exploring the 5 senses and how these are a vehicle for mindfulness.

What is the place of passion in the spiritual path in a lay life

We explore how the topic of self and not-self can be very confusing, for a number of reasons. We then present five perspectives for exploring this theme, a general way of making some sense of self and not-self and two initial practices to study 1. the sense of self, and 2. experience beyond limited senses of self.

After a review of last week's overview of exploring self and not-self, we look at five aspects of self: 1. a more neutral sense of "mere I" 2. Cultural conditions to be a particular kind of self; 3. the social self related to others 4. the wounded or stuck self; and 5. the subtle aspect of separation from other things are person. We suggest practicing to explore these five varieties.

We review briefly the last two talks and explore three ways of practicing: 1. Investigating self when it appears; 2. Opening to experiences of not-self; and 3. doing "heart practice" like lovingkindness and compassion to balance our being as we do more deeply.

After a brief review of past weeks, we examine the Buddha's basic teachings on self and not-self in terms of 1. the model of the "aggregate" of experience, 2. The link between a sense of self and conceptualization, and 3. practices to discern self and open to not-self.

After a review of our explorations of the last sessions, we outline a five-stage model for opening sequentially to more subtle aspects of not-self.

A conversation with Chade-Meng Tan, a conversation and dialogue....

This talk explores how the qualities of Mindfulness & Kindness are essential ingredients for meeting experience with wisdom, clarity & love...that allows us to hold ourselves, and difficult times with greater ease and compassion.

We explore in this integrative sessions, how a "thick" sense of self appears in various ways, and how we open to experience with progressively "thinner" senses of self. We also look at how anxiety and disorientation may arise at each stage, and how to understand what skillful uses of self are.

With the background of the last weeks exploration of our individual practice to see self and open increasingly to not-self, we connect that practice with our responses to global crisis, particularly global climate disruption. We see its roots in part in individualist models of self, and point to the importance of dharma practice in our responses to crisis.

Talk explores the 5 aggregates and the 3 characteristics using stories, suttas and practical exercises to develop relating wisely to the sense of self.

Initiation, Forgiveness & the Timeless Realm

The story of awakening and how we can find justice, compassion & wisdom where we are...

On Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, and inspired by our practice of beginning again moment-by-moment, we explore and reflect on what is most important, where we are out of alignment or integrity, forgiveness, and re-dedication to our deeper aspirations.

This talk explores how to work & live with the changing nature of life...

What is mindfulness? Why is it important? How does its practice bring us toward freedom? We look generally at mindfulness and then at how we practice mindfulness of 1. the body 2. feeling tone 3. thoughts and emotions (citta) and 4. larger patterns of experience (dhammas).