Our deepest suffering comes from feelings of separation, and as a species, our great task is realizing our belonging—to our bodies and hearts, to each other, to the living web of all beings, to formless loving awareness. These two talks explore how healing and true...
This meditation guides us through a scan, to awaken a healing and openhearted presence throughout our body. We then widen to our full field of awareness, including whatever wants attention in an open, inclusive loving presence. “Kindness is my simple religion....
After relaxing our bodies and quieting our minds, this meditation guides us to open to the changing experience of being alive. We ask ourselves two questions: “What is Happening Inside me?” and “Can I be with this?” By learning to bring an unconditional presence and...
This rich dialogue focuses on how the stories that shape our lives are based on male-generated origin tales and hero myths. If we are to create the world we believe in—a world based on love, compassion and respect for the dignity of all beings—we need to be guided by...
This practice – based on an ancient Buddhist meditation – bears the name of needlepoint I found in my sister’s office after she died. She was a nurse, and as such had taken the oath all medical practitioners take: to do no harm. She added the next...
This meditation awakens the senses with a mindful scanning of the body, establishes an anchor for presence, and invites us to arrive again and again, deepening the pathway home. When difficult or intense experience arises, the practice is to learn to open to what is...
“Play a Greater Part” – Bodhisattva for Our Times – During scary and uncertain times, the habitual reflex is to try to find ground by creating stories about what’s happening and hardening into us-them blame. This only perpetuates the aggression and violence that...
Amidst the great emotional reactivity of our times, this talk looks at: How do we hold this? What will allow us to respond wisely to our hurting world? How can we widen the circles of compassion? Our time includes a talk, sharing of responses to several inquiries and...
This meditation guides us to rest in the aliveness of the changing stream of sensations, sounds and feelings. As we open to the awareness that includes all life, we touch the peace, stillness and wakefulness that is our essence. We close with Wendell Berry’s beautiful...
This brief meditation is a version of the Tibetan Tonglen practice: With the support of the breath we allow ourselves to open to the realness of suffering, and then offer it into a boundless heartspace…a shared and compassionate awareness. This clip was recorded...
Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely intertwined with how we relate to change and loss. These two talks are an invitation to look honestly, and without judgment, at the ways, we resist facing our fears and grieving our losses. We then explore how to bring...
While meditation begins with purposeful collecting of attention, it leads to non-doing presence, to Being. In this guided practice, we arrive in presence through a body scan and attention to the breath, open the attention to changing experience, and then explore the...
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Resmaa Menakem speaks in a compelling way how this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational...
We unconsciously tense against the energetic life of the present moment. This meditation guides us in relaxing and opening to the full aliveness and awareness that animates our being. Photo: Donna JS Russo Dogfish Art
True listening arouses an open receptive presence that can be truly healing. This meditation awakens a listening presence; first bringing that receptive awareness to sensations and sounds, and then offering that presence to the tenderness and vulnerability of our...
