by Peter Carlson | Mar 19, 2026 | Listen to Dharma Talks
During this talk, Susan Baxter continues the review by our teachers of the Satipatthana Sutta, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse. After reviewing the overall structure of the Sutta, she focuses on the first of the Five Hindrances, Sense Desire, which investigates the distress and confusion associated with craving pleasant feelings. She then describes how skillful attention and letting go can effectively set aside the untrained mind’s strong desire for pleasant experience to be controlled. Part of the discussion focuses on how the over-activation of parts of the brain associated with feelings can lead to addiction, along with how mindfulness of breathing meditation and other wholesome mental conditions can effectively set aside sense desire.
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by Peter Carlson | Jun 4, 2026 | Listen to Dharma Talks
During this talk, Peter provides an overview of the four Brahma Viharas, with focus on how lovingkindness mantra repetition can be integrated with mindfulness of breathing meditation, adding additional attention to the middle of the chest as part of the practice. He describes how the vagus nerve connects the brain with various organs in the body, including the heart, linking what happens emotionally with the selfing story. He also describes how contemporary integrative research regarding the interactions between mindfulness and lovingkindness is beneficial for well-being.
Here are the notes accompanying the talk: Reviewing The Brahma Viharas
This talk can be associated with a guided meditation that preceded the presentation entitled “Guided Wisdom of Lovingkindness Meditation”, found in the audio archive.
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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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