Dhamma Talks
The Middle Way In The 21st Century
Continuing the theme developed during Peter's talks this year, we explored the value of thinking of and applying ways to alleviate suffering using the Four Noble Truths. While beginning the discussions of the Noble Eightfold Path, we spent one night on the Middle...
2013 Weekend Retreat Report
It is customary for those who've participated in a retreat to have the opportunity to talk about their experiences, in order to integrate the retreat into their daily life, and to inspire others to also deepen their practice by going on retreat. This is the report...
Peter’s Two Week Retreat Report
Reporting on significant retreat experiences is encouraged in our community, as it supports the integration of the meditation practice into life at home. It's also hoped that the reports will encourage others to go on retreats as well. This retreat was a bit...
Using Body Awareness Skillfully
During this dialogue, Kitty followed up on Judy's previous talk about mindfulness of the body. After reviewing the talk, she invited the sangha to share their experiences of using body awareness to interrupt the internal self-talk that seems to define our existence....
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...
