Donald explores some of the main themes of his March retreat, connecting these themes to general aspects of our practice. He shares some images of the Spirit Rock land, a group of turkeys, his place of practice and altar in his room, and the bench where he twice a day carried out a kind of ritual "talking to" his parents, who are deceased. He focuses on themes of listening for what calls one in one's practice and his main practices during the retreat: concentration practice, metta practice, the Tibetan practice of tummo (the inner fire) and the life of Milarepa, and awakened awareness. He concludes by speaking of some ways of keeping the retreat going in daily life, and, in preparation for the appearance of the Garbanzo Bean, Donald's clown personality, some on humor and spiritual practice. There is then discussion, including an appearance by Guru Garbanzo Bean responding to some questions, and closing in which we remember and honor Cyndy Gagne, a sangha member who recently passed.

After getting a sense of those present and a self-introduction, there is a guided meditation. We start with a few words on posture and invite a short period to connect with what is alive in one's practice. Then there are instructions for developing samadhi (concentration), followed by several short periods of guidance to cultivate awareness of the energy of the body, to tap into a sense of happiness and perhaps joy, and then a sense of peace. There is then a short period of mindfulness followed by a few minutes of reflection on (1) what is "calling" now in one's life and practice, and (2) how best one can connect formal meditation and daily life.

We first hear from a member of the community about how he is experiencing and responding to what's happening in the larger society and world in our times. We then fairly briefly review last week's session, first identifying the three traditional areas of training--in wisdom, meditation, and ethics--and how each can be important resources for responding to what's happening in our own experience and in our society and world. We focus especially on reviewing our exploration of "ethical practice," responding in our everyday lives and in the larger society and world in caring and compassionate ways. We then explore the traditional figure of the bodhisattva as one who brings together deep commitments both to awakening and to helping others--helping others both in awakening and in terms of their life needs. We look at examples of bodhisattva vows from Theravada, Japanese Zen, and Vietnamese traditions, as well as from passages from Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life." We show images of archetypal bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteshvara, Tara, Kwan Yin, and Manjushri and discuss the ten ways of training of the Mahayana bodhisattva. We suggest a number of contemporary exemplars of the bodhisattva vocation, and invite participants to develop their own personalized bodhisattva vows. The talk is followed by discussion.

We begin by hearing from two members of the community about how they are experiencing and responding to what's happening in the larger society and world in our times. Donald then discusses how we might respond on the basis of our practice, identifying the three areas of training--in wisdom, meditation, and ethics. Guided by wisdom teachings, we can see the society and world as both manifesting greed, hatred, and delusion, and also awakened qualities. In our meditation, we can practice on many levels, including working with challenging emotions, seeing through social conditioning, and bringing mindfulness to our thoughts, emotions, and bodies. We focus especially on "ethical practice," re-framed as developing caring and compassionate responses. We briefly outline the five ethical precepts, and then focus especially on the guideline of non-harming, clarifying how this is understood both more individually and socially, identifying teachings from the Buddha, King Ashoka, and Thich Nhat Hanh. We ask what our practice of developing "caring and compassionate" responses might look like, bringing in also material from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., including his nonviolence and understanding of interdependence, and Elie Wiesel, including his commitment always to speak up whenever there is suffering.

Diana and Donald each speak for about 20 minutes. Diana focuses especially on relational metta practice in daily life, including with parenting. Donald speaks of the aspiration, as the great Tibetan teacher Shabkar, emphasizes, on having one’s life and practice be one. He then focuses on the different dimensions of individual metta practice in daily life. The two talks are followed by a period of discussion.

Practicing to develop lovingkindness (metta), warmth, kindness, and love is an ancient vocation. The Buddha’s teachings on metta echo in many ways what we find in Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other traditions. In this talk, we explore the aims of metta practice, how it works, and some of the different approaches to such practice. With the retreat overlapping with Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday on January 15, we point to some of the parallels between metta practice and the life and work of Dr. King. We also identify the main challenges of metta practice, including distractions, uneven energy (including sleepiness), inability to access the heart, and difficult emotions, thoughts, and body-states emerging in what we call the “purification” process. As we deepen in metta individually, we also may bring metta into our community, social, and political lives.

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.

We continue with the exploration opened up last week in our examination of "skillful desire," starting again with the common misunderstanding of the Buddha's teachings as suggesting giving up all wanting of the pleasant and all not wanting of the unpleasant. There are, to be sure, some passages in the teachings which seem to suggest this approach; here is one example, from the Sallatha Sutta about the results of practice: “Desirable things don't charm the mind, undesirable ones bring no resistance." In the talk, we first review the nature of skillful desire and the distinction between skillful and unskillful desire. A starting reference point is the understanding of the sequence from contact to grasping in the teaching on Dependent Origination and. We look again at the Buddha's teachings on chanda or "skillful desire" and the importance of experiences of pleasure, joy, and happiness in different practice contexts. We then look in a similar way at skillful aversion, asking about the distinction between skillful and unskillful aversion, and pointing especially to the importance of inquiry into the experience of aversion; we look with some detail into the experience of anger. Finally, we connect our explorations with the experience of darkness and light at the time of the Winter Solstice, four days from now.

We start with settling for about 8 minutes followed by about the same time with basic mindfulness practice. Then we explore "moderate" experiences of pleasant or unpleasant when they occur, whether a bodily experience, an emotion, or a thought (or a mix), experiencing pleasant or unpleasant and seeing whether there follows wanting (or not wanting) and reactivity (habitual grasping or pushing away). We close with some reflection on what we explored, with an emphasis on skillful aversion: Was some of the not wanting skillful? Unskillful? What do we find in some daily life examples of aversion? This exploration is related to the talk given a short time later.

Sometimes people interpret the Buddha's teachings as suggesting giving up all wanting of the pleasant and all not wanting the unpleasant, and that equanimity has no wanting or not wanting; there are some passages in the teachings which seem to suggest this approach. However, the Buddha in a number of ways pointed to what we might call "skillful desire." We explore this in several ways. First, we go back to the teaching on Dependent Origination and the sequence from contact to grasping. We can identify that sequence as illustrating unskillful desire (or wanting) followed by grasping (as well as unskillful aversion). Secondly, we explore the Buddha's teachings on chanda, which could be translated as "skillful desire." Thirdly, we look at the role of experiences of pleasure, joy, and happiness in different practice contexts, and ask more generally about the nature of skillful desire (and some on "skillful aversion") in everyday life. What characterizes desire being unskillful or skillful? The talk is followed by discussion.

We start with settling for about 7-8 minutes followed by about the same time with basic mindfulness practice. Then we explore "moderate" experiences of pleasant or unpleasant when they occur, whether a bodily experience, an emotion, or a thought (or a mix), experiencing pleasant or unpleasant and seeing whether there follows wanting (or not wanting) and grasping (or pushing away). We close with some reflection on what we explored: Was some of the wanting or not wanting skillful? Unskillful. This exploration is related to the talk given a short time later.

After a brief general account of the three ways of liberating insight, we look at each of the three--insights into impermanence, dukkha, and not-self--with a longer treatment of insight into not-self. There is an emphasis especially on how we practice in order to come to these insights. We close with a passage from Ajahn Chah pointing to the unity of developing samadhi and cultivating insight. The talk is followed by discussion.

We review the nature of samadhi, how it is a natural quality that surfaces in many human experiences, and its importance in meditation (and the teachings of the Buddha). We briefly examine the five jhanic factors that point to how samadhi deepens. We also look at several of the main challenges that arise as we practice to develop samadhi.

We continue the exploration from last week, beginning with Donald sharing a few of his experiences of being able to learn and practice when there have been differences of views and even conflicts. Then there is a review of some what we explored last week, including the importance in a functioning democracy of navigating differences of views, some of the factors making that harder in current times, and some of the practice supports for conversations when there are different views—both inner and outer (especially related to wise speech practice). We go further into exploring inner practices helpful when there are differences, including working with reactivity and difficult emotions, exploring views and options, and then the integrated inner and outer practice of cultivating empathy as a practice. The talk is followed by discussion, including several people sharing their own explorations with challenging conversations in the last week.

We begin with settling and developing more concentration for about 10-12 minutes. Then we shift to mindfulness practice. In the last third of the session, there are instructions for exploring one's own views and opinions, including in relationship to others (connected with the talk).

How do we bring our practice to challenging conversations and discussions, including there are major differences in views and positions, whether on spiritual or social-politlcal or daily life matters? This is both a perennial practice question and a particularly important one in the current times. We begin our first of two explorations inviting the participants to explore both their most successful and their most difficult or painful discussions across differences, asking about the qualities present with both. We outline first some current social conditions that make discussions with differences more challenging, while acknowledging that such discussions are at the heart of a healthy democracy. Then we explore several supports for skillful conversations when there are differences, including shared agreements (among individuals or in a group or organization), wise speech practice, the vision of the "beloved community" or universal metta, and a commitment to align means and ends. The talk is followed by discussion.

We begin with a review of how the Buddha saw "ignorance" of the basic nature of things (not so much of facts or information) as the basic problem of human life; we are as if asleep, caught in dream-like living, and need to "wake up." For the Buddha, we are especially ignorant about impermanence, dukkha (or reactivity--grabbing at the pleasant and pushing away the unpleasant or painful and believing that this is the way to happiness), the nature of the self, and nirvana or awakening. We bring in a brief report of the experience of attending the previous week's EcoDharma retreat at Spirit Rock, emphasizing especially the pervasiveness of a sense of separation--from the earth, other living beings, and each other--and the connection of such sense of separation with our systemic problems. Indigenous teachers at the retreat particularly emphasized living without such separation. The second part of the talk, we focus on the teaching of not-self (anatta), and ways of practicing that deepens our understanding of not-self, as well as how we hold this understanding of pervasive human ignorance with compassion and kindness, including in our responses to the manifestations of ignorance. The talk is followed by discussion.

We begin with about 7-8 minutes of developing stability of attention and less distraction, through concentration practice or some other practice. We then explore several aspects of how we "construct" experience. We look at impermanence in several ways, noticing the arising, staying and changing, and passing away with (1) the breath, (2) body sensations, (3) sounds, and (4) the open flow of experience (about 3 minutes). Then there is a period of mindfulness practice with the additional instruction of looking out for a moderate or strong sense of self. We close with a short period of a heart practice such as lovingkindness or compassion.

The Buddha saw the core problem in human life as "ignorance"(avijjā), not an ignorance of facts or information, but rather a not-knowing about the basic nature of reality and our experience. The Dalai Lama tells us: "There is a fundamental disparity between the way we perceive the world, including our own experience in it, and the way things actually are." We explore how similar understandings of a core human ignorance are found in Plato, Christian and Islamic traditions, and in later Buddhist traditions. The Buddha said, in particular, that we are ignorant about impermanence, dukkha (or reactivity), and the nature of the self. We look into some of the main habitual constructions of experience, including a sense of permanent, stable, separate external objects, and a sense of a separate, independent self, pointing to ways of exploring such constructions meditatively. We also point to experiences in which we go beyond such constructions, in meditation and also in "flow" experiences. The talk is followed by discussion.

We begin with about 7-8 minutes of developing concentration, becoming more settled and less distracted. We then explore the impermanence in several ways, noticing the arising, staying and changing, and passing away with (1) sounds, (2) body sensations, and (3) the open flow of experience (about 2 minutes). Then there is a period of mindfulness practice with the additional instruction of looking out for a moderate or strong sense of self. We close with a short period of a heart practice such as lovingkindness or compassion; brief instructions are given for self-compassion practice (as developed by Kristen Neff).

We begin by remembering the three core methods of training given by the Buddha (wisdom, meditation, and "ethics"), and their interrelationship. We reflect on how ethics has often been marginalized in Western Buddhism (and at times in Asian Buddhism). We then look in depth at the first lay ethical precept, non-harming, first in terms of the core teachings of the Buddha, and its centrality in the earlier Indian traditions of the Vedas. We examine some of the more "outer" dimensions of practicing non-harming, seeing how, with mindfulness and strong intentions, we can bring non-harming into our daily lives, including in our speech and communication. We then look at the more "inner" dimensions of practicing non-harming, looking in particular at how harming ourselves or others typically comes out of our own pain, so that practicing with pain (and the teaching of the Two Arrows) is central. The talk is followed by discussion.

In this guided meditation, connected to the later talk on "Non-Harming," we begin with about 8 minutes of settling and becoming more present, developing more samadhi (concentration). Then there is a period of lovingkindness (metta) practice, including starting where the lovingkindness flows the easiest and then extending the lovingkindness to many other beings. This is followed by mindfulness practice, with guidance on exploring when there are negative or blaming views of self or another. Finally, we close with several reflection questions related to how there is harming of self and/or others at times in our lives.