by Peter Carlson | Mar 28, 2015 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This recording followed a guided body sweep meditation and provided an opportunity for the participants to discuss the experience and receive suggestions about their practice. Peter emphasized that the goal of this practice is to foster the maturing of vitakka and vicara (aiming and sustaining attention) into the awakening factor of investigation of mental phenomena. The practice also fosters the cultivation of mindfulness, persistent Right Effort, and concentration. These factors also foster the emergence of joy, tranquility and equanimity, the remaining factors of the seven awakening factors. This posting will be followed by the recorded body sweep meditation.
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by Peter Carlson | Mar 27, 2015 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This meeting involved a review by some of the participants in the nine day retreat from March 13 to the 22nd. First Peter reviewed the structure of the course, which blended practices found in the Anapanasati Sutta (mindfulness of breathing discourse) and the vedanupassana (body sweep) practice that Peter was trained in by his first teacher Ruth Denison and several retreats during which he was trained in the tradition taught by S. N. Goenka. The benefit of the body sweep was explained as a way to cultivate the seven awakening factors, especially mindfulness, investigation of mental phenomena, effort/persistence and concentration. the remaining three factors, joy, tranquility and equanimity, emerge more effectively as practice deepens.
Following this post, the dhamma talks recorded during the retreat will be posted as .mp3 files, along with some of the notes Peter referred to.
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by Peter Carlson | Mar 14, 2014 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This is the second of two talks about the importance of the practice of mindfulness of feelings. During this talk, Peter reviewed paticca samuppada, usually translated as dependent origination. A new rendering of the term was explained, that is, contingent provisional emergence, with clarification of the non-linear, mutually influential functions that affect how the mind overlays a provisional interpretation of raw sense data input, thereby creating a “selfing moment”. In this creative process, attention becomes fixated on a particular feeling and perception, creating the craving and clinging dynamic that is the driving force of our distresses about life. Mindfulness of feelings as feelings allows the skilled meditator to avoid “personalizing” the emerging self-organization, providing relief from craving and clinging.
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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 | Jan 30, 2014 | Listen to Dharma Talks
During this first of a series of talks exploring the Satipatthana Sutta, Peter talked of the mutually supportive functions of samadhi (concentration) and vipassana (insight). This was followed by a lively discussion regarding how different meditators cultivate these qualities, both during formal meditation and normal daily routines.
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