by Peter Carlson | Aug 29, 2024 | Listen to Dharma Talks
Peter has decided to open one meeting each month to discussion in response to any questions or observations by the participants at that meeting, focusing on Dharma and practice oriented issues. Questions and comments focused on the importance that the practice of mindfulness of feelings, along with the role of concentration in the practice of vipassana, insight into the conditioned nature of experience. Peter shared some insights he experienced on a retreat that revealed the moment-by-moment arising and passing away of mental phenomena, and the powerful impact it has had on his dedication to daily, diligent mindfulness of breathing meditation.
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by Peter Carlson | May 8, 2025 | Listen to Dharma Talks
The mindful investigation and effective management of intention is considered to be a primary goal of meditation practice, beginning with the intention to aim attention on the changing sensations occurring while practicing mindfulness of breathing meditation. During this guided contemplation Peter suggests various ways to cultivate mindfulness of two ways that intention manifests, focused on cognitive processes and focused on behavior.
This meditation is intended to be supportive of the information that is provided during the Dharma talk that follows, titled “Intention Creates the Self”.
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by Peter Carlson | Jul 14, 2016 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This talk follows on the previous talk entitled “Mindfulness And Political Judgment” from July 6. Peter again emphasized the intention of the talk is to demonstrate that rigid thinking and the potential for aggression, psychologically termed “conservatism” is evident in the current political conflicts, whether the conservative is a republican or democrat. The psychological terms negativity bias and confirmation bias were associated with the Buddhist concepts of craving and clinging, respectively. The neuroscientific evidence that differentiates psychological conservatism and liberalism was described. Peter pointed out that the neurological changes fostered by mindfulness and lovingkindness practices, combined with the principles of the Four Noble Truths, can be termed as liberal, that is, inclusive, open-minded and tolerant of different views. The qualities of liberalism just mentioned are very important for resolving the interpersonal hostility and fear that seems to dominate current social commentary.
Here are the notes for this talk: HOW MINDFULNESS CULTIVATES POLITICAL WISDOM
Next week will introduce exploration of the conflicted issues that contribute to the current political/cultural distress, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
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by Peter Carlson | Mar 7, 2014 | Listen to Dharma Talks
During this dialogue, Peter began to discuss the second Foundation of Mindfulness, vedanupassana (mindfulness of feelings). He talked of how feelings are not emotions as we might describe them in the West, but rather what in psychological terms is affect, the pull towards pleasant experience or away from unpleasant experience. Feelings are the bridge between physical sensations and the mental creations of meaning and self-organization we experience. He read a translation of the second foundation, and then led a brief guided meditation that illustrates concretely what to notice as a feeling, a perception and the mental formations that create what the Buddha called “the tyranny of I, me and mine”. This was followed by dialogues that further clarified the experiences of the guided meditation.
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by Peter Carlson | Jul 20, 2023 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This review, provided by April Koester, focuses on the Third Foundation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, which is intended to describe how the characteristics of various states of consciousness can affect our self-experiences. The mind operates like a filter, “coloring” perceptions through various states such as desire, aversion, dullness, agitation, etc. The goal of mindfulness and internal investigation is to understand the conditioning of the filtering process and, through Right Effort, create qualities of consciousness that provide an unfiltered view of the impermanent and non-self characteristics of subjective experience.
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