Dhamma Talks
Mindfulness of the Body
Judy continued her exploration of the Mindfulness of the Body section of the Satipatthana Sutta, the foundational Sutta for the practice of insight meditation in all it various forms throughout the world. She explored how the various Vipassana schools used the...
Robert’s Zen Retreat Report
Robert just completed a one week self retreat at the Providence Zen Center. It's part of our practice to provide someone who has completed a significant retreat to process their experience during one of the dharma dialogues. The value of this is to provide the...
The Nature Of Complacency
During this dialogue led by Kitty, the nature of complacency in spiritual practice was explored, combined with how conceit affects the mind. Conceit means to be attached to believing I am better, worse or separate from others. Kitty used an example from a...
Third Noble Truth Part 2
During this second of two talks on the Third Noble Truth, Peter reviewed last week's dialogue, which was focused on understanding how emotionally potent memories (karma) bias the data input through the sense doors, the result being that we "imagine" our way through...
Mindfulness of the Body
During this dialogue, Judy reviewed kayanupassana, mindfulness of the body, from the Satipatthana Sutta, which is usually translated as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. She explained that the "body" referred to is the aggregation of all the parts of the body,...
Craving and Clinging Review
During this dialogue, Tommy reviewed the last two presentations Peter provided on craving and clinging. Tommy's frequent use of facilitating questions opened up a lively dialogue among the folks attending. Wendy asked for comments from others about how they approach...
The Nature Of Clinging
During this talk, Peter continues the discussion begun in the last meeting on the Second Noble Truth. Again it was emphasized that there are three levels of approach to the Four Noble Truths: to be understood conceptually, to be noted upon emerging into awareness,...
The Nature Of Craving
During this talk, Peter reviewed the classic Buddhist concepts of craving and clinging in the context of the Second Noble Truth. Special emphasis was placed on the insights of modern neuropsychological research that relates Buddhist notions of craving to the...
2013 Post Retreat Review
It is our custom to dedicate the Wednesday night meeting after a significant retreat to discussing the retreat experiences. This meeting is the first one after a one week retreat at the Deerhaven Retreat Center. It is hoped that finding the words to describe the...
Guided Body Sweep Meditation
Mindfulness of the body is a fundamental practice in the Buddhist tradition. Body awareness includes physical sensation as well as hearing, seeing, smelling and tasting. There's nothing imaginative about sensation-mindfulness is most important as the process of...
