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Dharma Talks
given at Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2021-02-08
Seeing the World with the Heart of Wisdom | Monday Night talk
51:25
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Jack Kornfield
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We have the capacity to be awake and to see the world as it is with a graciousness and an understanding.
As the poet Mary Oliver writes, "To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."
This is our dance, our human incarnation: to tend and love that which is ephemeral.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2021-02-08
Meditation: Loving Awareness | Monday Night
26:47
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Jack Kornfield
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The freedom of loving awareness is available; it just takes practice for you to remember it, and to trust that it is always here. When you feel lost, stuck in a tiny part of the big picture, contracted, or caught up, take a breath and visualize yourself stepping back. With a spacious mind, you can witness even these contracted states and hold them in loving awareness.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2021-01-25
Reconciliation | Monday Night talk
53:22
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Jack Kornfield
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Conflict is natural—we can be attached to our needs, desires, ideas and visions. Our brains are wired with a negativity bias to look for things that are threatening. But some other part of us knows there is another way. We need to pause and reflect for a moment. What is it that matters most? This vision is needed more than ever in the midst of our difficulties.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2021-01-25
Meditation: Reconciliation | Monday Night
31:32
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Jack Kornfield
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This meditation is a deep-hearted reflection, a possibility, a yearning, a vision. Even if we cannot or should not speak to the other, we can find the courage to hold reconciliation and goodwill in our own heart.To recite the intention of reconciliation is to willingly plant a seed of reconnection and love in our heart. As we repeat each phrase, we turn our intention to the possibility of restoring harmony where suffering has set us apart.
May our lives lead to wise, healthy, and courageous reconciliation.
Further reading: “The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace”
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2021-01-20
Practicing with Intentions 2: Developing Intentions and Vows to Guide Practice in One's Communities, Society, and World
65:32
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Donald Rothberg
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After a review of the January 6 session on practicing with intentions in individual formal and daily life practice, and on Inauguration Day, we explore practicing in more community, social, and collective settings. In this context, we point to the importance of combining i"inner" and "outer" practice, and to two possible inspirations: (1)the figure of the bodhisattva who combines awakening and helping others, and (2) the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a kind of bodhisattva. On this basis, there is a short period in which those present are asked to write their own intentions and/or vows to guide their responses to the current needs and crises of our world. Some share their writing!
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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Attached Files:
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Practicing with Intentions 2
by Donald Rothberg
(PDF)
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2021-01-10
Our Training in Cultivating Metta: An Overview
55:07
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Donald Rothberg
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Practicing metta is an ancient vocation in which we incline toward metta, toward a warm, expansive friendliness, each moment. In doing so, we also come to see what gets in the way of metta. A metta retreat offers us a focused period of training, helping us then to bring our metta more into our formal practice, our daily lives, and a world deeply in need of metta.
Yet there are challenges in metta practice. We also identify a number of these challenges, and how responses to the challenges point to some of the fundamental ways that training in metta transforms us.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Metta Retreat
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2021-01-06
Practicing with Intentions 1: Individual Formal and Daily Life Practice
1:11:08
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Donald Rothberg
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At this time of transition, for the earth in the Northern Hemisphere, for many of us in the New Year, and for the U.S., in which clarity of intentions is so important, we explore two types of intentions: (1) aspiration or being guided by one's deeper values and intentions, sometimes taking the form of vows; and (2) moment-to-moment intentions. We are especially interested in connecting the two types of intentions. A focus on moment-to-moment intentions (cetana) helps us with wise action and practice moment-to-moment, seeing which intentions are skillful and which are not (including implicit or even unconscious tendencies linked with habitual energies). We look a number of ways of practicing with intentions both in our formal and our informal practice. We close with a short writing exercise bringing out our core intentions and next steps for the coming period, and then have a period of discussion and sharing.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2021-01-03
From Anxiety to Kind Presence: Dharma and Mindful Movement
3:29:59
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Djuna Devereaux
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In our current global situation and resulting personal life challenges, anxiety is a natural reaction. However, our bodies are not designed for chronic stress, and it can derail our well-being.
Our day retreat will utilize mindfulness and embodied practices to relieve anxiety and restore a sense of trust in our body’s ability to self-regulate. Our sessions will weave Dharma wisdom, rhythmic breath work, and mindful movement emphasizing somatic awareness.
These practices are designed to release chronic tension, regulate our nervous systems, calm reactivity, and develop a gentle relationship with ourselves. This process of resourcing will reconnect us with our innate calm presence, for agency over our responses and greater resilience. We will then turn toward the hindrance of anxiety and investigate its nuances with kindness and self-compassion. We may come to know anxiety as a teacher—one that deepens mindful awareness and a tender connection to our inner states.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2020-12-19
Practicing at the Winter Solstice: Embracing the Dark, Inviting the Light
62:29
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Donald Rothberg
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After setting the context of the Winter Solstice, in terms of the earth and the history of many varied cultures which have had rituals and ceremonies at this time, we explore, through teachings, stories, and poems, five ways that we open to the dark:
(1) We stop and become still, like the earth.
(2) We learn to be more able to be skillfully with difficulties and challenges..
(3) We become more comfortable and skillful in conditions of not knowing, as we open to the unknown, the mystery, and shadow areas, both individual and collective.
(4) We come to experience darkness as generative and fertile, creative and dynamic.
(5) We come to experience darkness as luminous, as generating light, as opening us to the light.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Winter Solstice Insight Retreat: Embracing the Dark, Inviting
the Light
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Attached Files:
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Embracing the Dark, Inviting the Light
by Donald Rothberg
(PDF)
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2020-12-14
Rekindle and Renew | Monday Night talk
40:44
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Jack Kornfield
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Many of us discover we live partially in a dreamworld, cut off from our body and whole pieces of our life. Though we may sense our disconnection, we do not know exactly what is wrong.
James Joyce captured this dilemma when he wrote of one character, “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” Enlightenment must be lived here and now through this very body. In this body and mind we can discover the cause of suffering and the end of suffering. For awakening to be an opening into freedom in this very life, the body must be its ground.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2020-12-14
Meditation: Breath Love In Breath Love Out | Monday Night Talk
24:18
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Jack Kornfield
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Meditation is an invitation in this moment’s practice to turn our attention to our body, heart and mind. Begin to pay attention to this mysterious human incarnation. Feel how your body is breathing itself… you don’t have to do anything. Add metta or lovingkindness to each breath. With each breath in, fill your body and being with lovingkindness for yourself. With each breath out, sense you are sending love out to the world.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2020-12-13
The Art and Practice of Forgiveness
4:23:24
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Phillip Moffitt,
Noliwe Alexander
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The art of forgiveness begins with connecting to the heart. The practice involves learning skills such as metta, mindful acknowledgement, and compassion. Practicing these skills enables you to free yourself from painful identification with past events.
This is a day to bring remorse or grief about past actions and move beyond feelings of guilt and shame. Likewise, if someone has wronged you, you will be guided toward holding them in accountability without closing your heart. Additionally, forgiveness practice will move you toward clarity and acceptance for the ways you have let yourself down.
Practicing forgiveness allows you to move from a heavy, remorseful heart and a reactive mind to a heart that’s light but still feels regret, and a mind that is calm and clear. The day will be held with periods of guided silent sitting and walking meditation practice, instruction in the art and practice of forgiveness, and a forgiveness ceremony, with opportunities to ask questions to the instructors.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2020-12-09
Practicing with Views 3
1:11:29
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Donald Rothberg
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We review some of what we've covered in previous sessions, including the Buddha's teachings on views, the core of the problem being reactivity (grasping and pushing away) in relationship to views--not views themselves, and three ways of practicing with views. We then introduce one of the three forms of deeper inquiry into views mentioned, the approach of Nagjarjuna (c. 150-250 C.E.), the "second Buddha." Nagarjuna demonstrated a method of showing how any reactively-held views, including Buddhist views, leads to contradictions and absurdity.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
:
Monday and Wednesday Talks
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Attached Files:
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Nagarjuna Slides Draft 3
by Donald Rothberg
(PDF)
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2020-12-02
Practicing with Views 2
1:18:14
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Donald Rothberg
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We continue to explore the important, complex, and often challenging theme of practicing with views (or beliefs)--a central theme of individual practice and a vital area in the contemporary collective context. We first review the teachings of the Buddha on views, mentioning several key texts in which it's clear that he takes a highly pragmatic approach to views; views are helpful if they are conducive to awakening and traditional Indian metaphysical views are both not helpful and not ultimately resolvable in terms of their validity. An approach to views is unskillful if based on reactivity, on grasping or fixating, on the one hand, or pushing away in aversion, on the other. We also explore how many social views are the result of manipulation and control, as in propaganda and the social construction, often for reasons of manipulation, of many of our most central concepts and views. In the last part of the talk, we explore several ways of practicing with views, including (1) developing mindfulness of views, (2) inquiring into fixed views (we outline a number of methods), and (3) cultivating listening and empathy. The talk is followed by discussion, with comments and questions.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2020-11-30
Exploring the Buddha's Core Teaching: "I teach Dukkha and the End of Dukkha"
64:48
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Donald Rothberg
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The Buddha famously said, “I have dukkha and the end of dukkha.” Yet it can be confusing to know what the Buddha might have meant. One reason for the confusion is that there are multiple accounts of dukkha in the discourses; we explore four of them, finding that, for the first three, it doesn't make sense to speak of the "the end of dukkha." Only for the fourth sense of dukkha, which we find both in the teaching of the Two Arrows (or Darts) and in the teaching of Dependent Origination does "the end of dukkha" make sense. On this basis, we then explore the nature of dukkha, interpreted especially as reactivity, which we find in two forms--grasping and pushing away. We lastly explore eight core ways of practicing with dukkha.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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2020-11-20
Freedom From the Inner Critic: Using the Tools of Wisdom and Compassion
4:07:37
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Mark Coleman
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Do you experience the painful effects of self-judgment, or hurt from your mind's harsh attacks on yourself? If you wish to be free from the torment of the inner critic, then this day is for you.
During our time together, you will learn to work with self-judgment with clarity and skill and develop greater self-acceptance, self-compassion and forgiveness as antidotes to criticism. The day will include a combination of talks and interactive exercises, mindfulness and kindness techniques. This will be a practical and experiential day retreat, taught with lightness, compassion and humor and the need to not take ourselves too seriously!
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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2020-11-11
Practicing with Views
1:10:56
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Donald Rothberg
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Practicing with one's views or opinions or beliefs is central both to traditional Buddhist practice and to what is needed in a society polarized by views; it is also central to relationships and skillful communication, especially in difficult or conflictual situations. We establish in this session a foundation for such practice, by identifying both the core teachings on views by the Buddha and three basic ways of practicing with views. We explore the core teachings on views especially by looking at five key passages from the Buddha's discourses, getting a sense of how attachment to views can be problematic. We also identify three ways of practicing with views: (1) becoming mindful of one's views, (2) inquiring into one's views when one notices an opposition with the views of others, and (3) listening and developing empathy in relationship to the views of others. After the talk, we discuss together many questions and points related to these teachings and practices.
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Monday and Wednesday Talks
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