Meditation & Dharma Talk

Begins with a 30m meditation & is followed by a Dharma Talk

We explore the centrality of being skillful with intentions in our practice and a number of different ways of practicing to cultivate skillful intentions, in part related to the New Year. We look at the Buddha's account of karma (kamma in Pali) as intention, and his teaching on the importance of reflection in living with skillful intentions. Remembering the Chinese Chan (Zen) teacher Yunmen's speaking of the centrality of "appropriate response," we develop a simple model for developing skillful intentions leading to skillful or appropriate responses. We also explore the variety of types of intentions, and recent Stanford research about how we might skillfully (and successfully) follow intentions to develop new routines. We then look at the importance for identifying our deeper intentions of develop an intuitive listening to life and to what calls us, in part exploring the theme of listening through poems. The talk is followed by a short guided meditation on intentions and then by discussion.

We start by tuning into our intentions, both our "larger" or "deeper" intentions for why we practice and a more specific intention for this practice session based on how we are in the moment (maybe really settled or maybe distracted by what happened yesterday). We then work to develop concentration (samadhi) in one of several ways, particularly setting an intention either to be more relaxed (if we tend to be "tight" and over-efforting) or to be more effortful (if we tend to be overly relaxed). We later tune in to how the practice is going and see if we want to respond with an intention. After a period focusing on developing concentration, we practice mindfulness, again after a while seeing how things are and whether we want to set a skillful intention related to mindfulness. We close with a series of reflections on what we want to let go of in the next period of time, and what calls us.

Moving from body to choiceless attention to awarenenss of awareness, we consider the Bahiya Sutta and how it points to the not-self nature of things.