Orlando Insight Meditation Group

A Contemporary Buddhist Mindfulness Meditation Community For Central Florida

The Ten Paramita

by | Oct 8, 2012 | Study Resources

This past week during the Wednesday night Dharma talk, Ross Payne shared his thoughts related to the Ten Paramita.

 Paramita means gone to the other shore. It is the highest development of each the following qualities:

  1. Giving or generosity
  2. Virtue, ethics, morality
  3.  Renunciation, letting go, not grasping
  4. Panna or Prajna “Wisdom” insight into the nature of reality
  5. Energy, vigor, vitality, diligence
  6. Patience or forbearance
  7. Truthfulness
  8. Resolution, determination, intention
  9. Kindness, love, friendliness
  10. Equanimity

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Peter at the Forest Refuge

by | Sep 10, 2012 | Study Resources

As you may know, Peter Carlson, the founding teacher of the Orlando Insight Meditation Group, is on a 3-month meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Society‘s Forest Refuge in Barre, Massachusetts. Recently, Peter shared these photos and the message, “I’m off to a peaceful  start.”

OIMG Book Club Review

by | Jul 8, 2012 | Study Resources

Buddhism Without Beliefs, Chapters 13 – 15

Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening offers a practical, step-by-step tool for fostering/nurturing awakening now.

Below, OIMG Book Club members offer reflections on the insights they are experiencing from our weekly reviews of each chapter, finishing with the “Fruition” section

We hope these summaries of each chapter from Batchelor’s very thoughtful and insightful book, written, as he says in the Preface, “in ordinary English,” has been an inspiration for some to check out this very liberating practice offered to the world by Siddhartha Gautama some 2500 years ago.

The Book Club members encourage, and are ready to support, additional book review groups. (more…)

Invitation to Join OIMG Book Club

by | Jun 17, 2012 | Study Resources

by Mitch Sullen

Peter’s recent dharma talk about bringing the kind of mindfulness we practice “on the cushion” into daily life was very timely for the Orlando Insight Meditation Group Book Club.

As our small group wraps up the 15-week review of Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening, another book has come into focus that also offers “a practical tool one might use to foster/nurture awakening now.” Living Meditation, Living Insight: The Path of Mindfulness In Daily Living by Dr. Thynn Thynn  was originally self-published in 1992.  Click here for a free download.

I invite anyone who has an interest in joining the OIMG Book Club to discuss this book to contact me by email or phone 407-529-5531 by Wednesday, June 27, 2012.

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Proposed 21st Century Precepts

by | May 24, 2012 | Study Resources

By Peter Carlson

When the future Buddha, Siddhatha Gotama, left his comfortable family life, his intention was not to start a religion.  Setting aside the mythical cultural add-ons of later generations, there is no evidence that he consulted with the relevant religious authorities of the time, the Brahmans, in his quest.  Embedded in the story is his preoccupation with the human problem of suffering.  He, like Jesus of a later era, was considered first and foremost a healer, even to the use of diagnostic terms set out in Buddhist doctrine: what are the symptoms (1st Truth, suffering), what is the cause of the disease (2nd Truth, craving and clinging), what is the cure (3rd Truth, the release of craving and clinging that Nibbana represents), and the applied intervention (4th Truth, the Eightfold Path).  The essential ingredient of the Eightfold Path is the cultivation of Panna, wisdom. (more…)