Dhamma Talks
The First Noble Truth and Stress
The Buddhist First Noble Truth, the reality of dukkha, was described in contemporary terms. The traditional translation of dukkha is "suffering"; modern commentators prefer words such as "stress", "insufficiency", and "dissatisfaction", among others, to describe...
Mindfulness And Emotional Intelligence
During this talk, Peter describes how mindfulness meditation supports the development of "Emotional Intelligence", which is the title of a book written by Daniel Goleman. Emotional intelligence provides internal resources such as self-awareness, self-regulation,...
2016 Spring Bok Tower Retreat
After a retreat, we set aside one evening's talk for reviewing the experience. Much of what happens during a retreat is not clearly registered in the mind; talking about the retreat with well-informed people helps clarify the gains from the intensive practice and the...
Mindful Breathing and The Brain
This talk concludes a series of explorations of the neuroscientific discoveries about how mindfulness of breathing meditation restructures important neural pathways during the process of awakening. The topic for this discussion reviews some of the progressive steps...
How Mindfulness Meditation Benefits The Brain
This talk and discussion continues exploring last week's review of what research is revealing about what happens in the brain to manifest consciousness and a sense of self. The focus of the current night was on what happens in the brain when Buddhist mindfulness of...
How The Brain Creates A Self March
During this talk, Peter reviewed the extensive research literature that supports contemporary understanding of self-organizing functions. Prior to this era, Buddhist concepts were derived from culturally determined mythology, which is hard for contemporary Westerners...
Why We Should Meditate
During this talk, the development of meditation as an evolutionary process was reviewed. The first images of a person in a meditative position dates from about 5,000 years ago. The initial motivation likely was to find a way to appease the forces of nature,...
Deerhaven 2016 Retreat Review
It is customary for the meeting after a major retreat experience to be dedicated to reviewing the retreat. The annual one week retreat at Deerhaven was reviewed, with Peter providing an outline of the retreat schedule and daily dhamma talk topics. This description...
From Precepts To Commitments
During this talk, Peter provided some background regarding the development of Buddhist precepts, in that in the Buddha's time, ethical behavior involved following the dictates of one's clan; the Buddha said that what makes a person "noble" involved an ethics supported...
Mindful Misery
Peter participated in a one week retreat led by Steve Armstrong, a well-respected Buddhist teacher. During the retreat, he contracted a chest cold, having to spend most of the retreat and one week at home in bed recuperating. During this talk, he reviewed his...
