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Retreat Dharma Talks
at Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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| Regular weekly talks given at the lower Spirit Rock meditation hall |
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2019-02-20
Seven Stages of the Spiritual Journey
1:16:50
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Donald Rothberg
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Partly in honor of the recently deceased poet, Mary Oliver, we use her poem, "the Journey", as a reference point for understanding the nature of the spiritual journey. Two other reference points are the life of the Buddha, and then the experiences of our own lives. After an exploration of the very nature of the journey, and how a journey may take years, or two weeks, or an hour, we explore seven stages of the spiritual journey, starting with taking life for granted, being caught up in habitual and conditioned mind and behavior, and ending with some degree of awakening and then re-entering the "ordinary" world, often bringing gifts from the journey. In between is the heart of the journey. [The talk ends at 1.06.23.]
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2019-02-27
Practices for the Seven Stages of the Spiritual Journey
1:19:05
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Donald Rothberg
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After a review of the seven stages of the spiritual journey presented the week before (originally with reference to Mary Oliver’s “The Journey,” the life of the Buddha, and our own journeys), we explore how for each stage, there are particular practices and intentions that are central. As we explore the practices, we get a better sense of the variety of practices that we may work with at different points in our own journeys, and which are most appropriate at which times.
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2019-04-10
From the Ordinary Habitual Mind to the Buddha-Mind 3: Practicing with the Body 1.”
1:26:32
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Donald Rothberg
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After an overview of ten aspects of the transformation of the ordinary habitual mind, and a review of the first, examining how thinking is transformed, we look at (1) the nature of contemporary habitual experience of the body, (2) the nature of the awakened experience of the body, and (3) how we practice to enact this transformation, particularly focusing on various aspects of mindfulness of the body.
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2019-05-01
From the Ordinary Habitual Mind to the Buddha-Mind 4: Practicing with the Body 2
66:25
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Donald Rothberg
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We contextualize our conditioning in relationship to the different “parts” of our experience—related to our thinking, emotions, and body—by examining some the social and cultural history of the last few hundred years, in which thinking has been increasingly differentiated from emotions and the body. We then examine further the nature of our ordinary, habitual experience of the body. The main focus is on a number of “body practices,” including mindfulness of the body in both formal meditation and daily life, ways to self-regulate when there is high activation, using the body in investigation of experience, and the body as a key to presence in speech and interaction.
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2019-05-22
From the Ordinary Habitual Mind to the Buddha-Mind 5: Opening to the Awakened Heart
57:02
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Donald Rothberg
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After a brief account of the ten parameters of transformation that we’re considering in this series, we look at one of them--the ordinary habitual “heart,” our emotions and our access (or not) to kindness and care. We examine many factors that block or limit the awakened heart of kindness and love, including greed, hatred, and delusion; several dimensions of social and historical conditioning; the split between mind, body, and emotions; unhealed wounds; emotions like fear and anger; and attachment to views. We point to some of the ways, including in meditation practice, to access the awakened heart.
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