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Dharma Talks
given at Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2025-02-05
Awakening in a Time of Turmoil
67:08
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Donald Rothberg
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We continue to explore the nature of awakening. In the first 2/3 of the talk, we examine the traditional notion of awakening, as going beyond the habitual constructions of experience in all the parts of our lives. These constructions are rooted in reactivity (grasping and pushing away aspects of our experience), and a sense of self along with a world of objects known conceptually (through "signs"). We look also at the more positive sense of awakening to the "signless, boundless, and all luminous," to what the Thai Forest teacher Ajahn Mun calls the "primal mind." Then we ask about whether there are other dimensions to awakening needed for contemporary awakening, and examine in particular what awakening means in a time of turmoil. We take Thich Nhat Hanh as an exemplar--a practitioner dedicated to awakening practicing and teaching amidst the turmoil of war and exile. We outline a number of suggestions and guidelines for those practicing and awakening amidst the current turmoil.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2025-02-05
Guided Meditation: Exploring Some Further Ways We Construct Experience
35:51
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Donald Rothberg
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We start with basic instructions in developing (1) concentration and stability, and (2) mindfulness, and then practice developing these two qualities. With mindfulness practice, we notice the main patterns of thoughts, emotions, and bodily experience. In the second half of the session, we work with being aware of the feeling-tone (linked with the Second Foundation of Mindfulness), noticing moderate (or somewhat greater) pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tones, and what occurs after we notice them. We also attend for a short period of two minutes to the moment-to-moment feeling tones of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and then go back to basic mindfulness practice for the last part of the session.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2025-01-16
Metta Practice and the Larger World (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
42:17
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Donald Rothberg
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In this session, Donald gives about a 25-minute talk, followed by 15 minutes of discussion. How do we move from a week of metta practice into a time of turmoil and uncertainty in the U.S. and in the world? A number of guidelines and suggestions are given, including keeping the vision of practicing in all parts of one’s life, and keeping close the visions of awakening and of what Dr. King called the “beloved community.” In this time, staying connected with community is also crucial, as are, among many skillful intentions, practicing skillfully with difficult emotions, grounding in the body, cultivating cycles of engagement and withdrawal, and being careful about the amount of information one takes in. The talk ends by pointing to Joanna Macy’s model of three areas of transformation, and the invitation to respond to the call that each of us may hear. Discussion follows.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Mettā Retreat: Teachings and Practices to Cultivate a Wise, Awakened, and Responsive Heart
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2025-01-15
Metta Practice and the Life and Work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
55:59
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Donald Rothberg
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On the birthday of Dr. King, we explore some of the remarkable and powerful parallels between Metta practice and Buddhist teachings, on the one hand, and the life, teachings, and work of Dr. King, on the other. We explore in particular three areas: (1) the connection between Metta and the Christian tradition of acting from love that is central for King; (2) the wisdom perspective of seeing greed, hatred, and delusion, and developing understanding and manifesting non-reactivity through ethical grounding and nonviolence; and (3) the other qualities of the awakened heart--the Brahmavihara for the Buddha, and Dr. King’s way of manifesting qualities in addition to love, such as compassion, empathy, joy, and equanimity.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Mettā Retreat: Teachings and Practices to Cultivate a Wise, Awakened, and Responsive Heart
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2025-01-11
Generosity Is the Answer
29:10
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Devon Hase
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A talk focused on Dana Parami and its role in recognizing Nibbana. The discussion highlighted the importance of removing obscurations to reveal awareness, wisdom, and love. Devon explained how Paramis helped clear the way and emphasized the interdependence of giving and receiving. Practical aspects of generosity were addressed, including maintaining healthy boundaries and understanding motivations. Personal stories and reflections were shared to illustrate different types of giving and the long-term benefits of a generous mindset. Devon encouraged participants to practice generosity in daily life and highlighted the profound impact of living with an open heart.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Spirit Rock - Rainbow Sangha
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2025-01-08
The Nature of Awakening and the Path to Awakening
58:53
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Donald Rothberg
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As we begin a new year, it's helpful to remember the deep motivation of our practice--to awaken--and to ask how our intention to awaken manifests in our practice. In this talk, we explore the Buddha's metaphor of "awakening" (from sleep, from dreams) as a metaphor for spiritual practices, and how he also speaks of realizing Nirvana. We unpack how the Buddha understood Nirvana and awakening--both negatively, as the end of ignorance, and dukkha and reactivity--and more positively as going fully beyond the ordinary constructions of experience. We also look at how the Buddha understood the practical path of training to realize awakening and Nirvana, and how this was explicated through different teachings and practices. At the end, we briefly bring up the question of what a contemporary path of awakening looks like. The talk is followed by discussion.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-12-18
Talk: Practicing at the Winter Solstice: Embracing the Dark, Inviting the Light
62:34
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Donald Rothberg
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The time of the Winter Solstice, leading up to the New Year, can be an important time for practice, as we, like the plants, stop, as we open to not doing as much, to stillness, and to listening. We look at some of the background, across different cultures, for the celebration of the Winter Solstice. We then explore five themes, five metaphors of darkness, that can support our practice at this time: (1) the darkness as related to a stopping and becoming still, like the earth; (2) being able to be with difficulties, the darkness as a metaphor for difficulty or challenge; (3) going into the darkness of not knowing—the unknown, the mystery; (4) the darkness as generative and creative; and (5) the darkness as luminous, generating light, opening us to the light. The talk is followed by discussion.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-12-13
The Three Supports and the Three Characteristics (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
58:53
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Mei Elliott
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This talk explores how the three supports (faith/confidence, well-being, and stability/concentration) provide the necessary conditions for insight into the three characteristics (impermanence, suffering, and not-self). In doing so, a map of the development of practice is unfolded, covering how insight occurs, what the insights are, and how they culminate in liberation.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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December Insight Retreat: Cultivating Calm, Contentment, and Confidence
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2024-12-11
Understanding and Practicing with Anger
63:35
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Donald Rothberg
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We continue to explore the intersection of our more inner practice and our practice with the larger world, including the U.S. post-election world. Our starting point is seeing how widespread and predominant the emotions of anger and fear are in our society. We look particularly at the nature of anger and how to practice with it, especially in terms of our own anger but also in terms of the anger of others.
Anger, it has been said, is the most confusing emotion in Western civilization, seen often over the last 2500 years sometimes as both entirely as negative and sometimes as a quality that manifests, for example, in the Jewish prophets, Jesus, and God. There's a confusion also among Western Buddhists, who may have conditioning related to aversion to anger combined with following problematic translations of terms like dosa (entirely negative in the Buddhist context) as "anger" (not entirely negative in the contemporary Western context).
Based on these explorations of the nature of anger, we look at how to practice with anger individually, especially through mindful investigation of anger and how anger can lead either to reactivity and the formation of reactive views of self and/or other, or to skillful action. We also explore practicing with the anger of others through empathy practice.
The talk is followed by discussion and sharing, including of the experiences of practicing with anger from several people. The meditation before the talk includes a guided exploration of an experience of anger in the last third of the meditation period (the meditation is also on Dharma Seed).
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2024-12-05
Metta as Refuge (Retreat at Spirit Rock)
48:27
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Leslie Booker
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A response to where we are in this time in our history when everything might seem a bit topsy turvy and upside down. The political commentator Melissa Harris Perry refers to this kind of confusion as trying to stand up straight in a crooked room. Many of us have been secluding, isolating, putting up walls as armour, as protection - in order to not feel the full catastrophe. Many of us are here because we’re ready to lay that armour down, to engage with life and be alive again. And so this afternoons reflections will be on how we can rest in Metta as refuge.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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In the Presence of Love: A Mettā & Qigong Retreat
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