Talks: Reflections on the Path

The attention that serves spiritual awakening is based on the capacity to recognize clearly what is happening in the present moment, and to regard what arises with a kind heart. This talk explores the challenges to a clear and honest presence, and how we cultivate understanding and compassion.

In the Buddhist tradition, wise effort, or the purposeful dedication of our energy, is an essential part of the spiritual path. While the attitudes of grasping or fear can contract the quality of our effort and create suffering in our lives; when our effort arises from sincerity and wisdom, it creates the conditions for liberation.

This talk explores how we cut off from the energetic parts of our inner experience and the healing and spiritual freedom that is possible when we bring awareness to the life of the body.

A fundamental skill cultivated through meditation is awakening from our stories and arriving back in the aliveness of the moment. If we investigate, we find that a large portion of our stories create physical and emotional stress, separate us from others, and obscure the truth of who we are. In this talk you are invited to identify several of your “top ten hits”, explore how these stories live in your body, and reconnect with living presence.

A critical question on the spiritual path is how we can bring the loving presence awakened by meditation into every facet of daily life. This talk explores the conditioning that keeps us in reactive trance and the ways we can deepen our attention and align our lives with our hearts.

Our capacity to accept this life is key to our freedom, yet there are many misconceptions about acceptance: People wonder, if acceptance makes us a doormat in relationships? Isn’t acceptance akin to resignation? Doesn’t it make us passive when what is needed is action? This talk explores some of the misunderstandings about acceptance and offers teachings on the nature of genuine and liberating acceptance.

When caught in suffering we are perceiving reality through a distorted lens. We are unable to see what we really are, and we latch on to the surface appearances of others. By training our minds to pay attention we begin to recognize the conditioning that entraps us, and the love and awareness that shines through these changing forms.

The Buddha taught of two dimensions of happiness–that which is based on particular circumstances, and that which arises from unconditional presence. This talk explores the ways we block happiness; the attitude and meditative practice that give rise to worldly happiness and the state of Being that is experienced as pure happiness and freedom.

(Note: Judy Brown’s poem, “Fire,” can be found at:
http://www.judysorumbrown.com/resources/poems.html

The now common adage “what you resist, persists” is a deep and important truth. This talk explores the often unconscious ways that we avoid the difficult parts of our experience, and the meditative strategies for cultivating an accepting and healing presence.

This four week series reviews many key components of Buddhist meditation practice. Beginning with intention and attitude, we cover the strategies that help us arrive in presence, the key elements of mindfulness, working with difficult emotional states and the practices that awaken our heart. Each week will include guided meditations and reflections.

This four week series reviews many key components of Buddhist meditation practice. Beginning with intention and attitude, we cover the strategies that help us arrive in presence, the key elements of mindfulness, working with difficult emotional states and the practices that awaken our heart. Each week will include guided meditations and reflections.

This four week series reviews many key components of Buddhist meditation practice. Beginning with intention and attitude, we cover the strategies that help us arrive in presence, the key elements of mindfulness, working with difficult emotional states and the practices that awaken our heart. Each week will include guided meditations and reflections.

This four week series reviews many key components of Buddhist meditation practice. Beginning with intention and attitude, we cover the strategies that help us arrive in presence, the key elements of mindfulness, working with difficult emotional states and the practices that awaken our heart. Each week will include guided meditations and reflections.

Thoughts, and more broadly, conceptual knowledge, cannot lead to the direct realization of truth, of reality. While thoughts are an essential part of surviving and thriving, spiritual awakening only becomes possible when we step out of the trance of thinking. This talk invites listeners into the radical openness and freedom of not-knowing.

Our conditioning is to conclude that “something is wrong” when we encounter difficulty. This way of relating to experience binds us in a trance–it locks in the identification with a separate, victimized, self; it leads to unwise action and it removes us from presence. This talk guides us in recognizing our often unconscious attitude towards what is happening, and arriving in the unconditional presence that is the source of love, wisdom and freedom.

Vesak is the Buddhist holiday that celebrates the Buddha’s birth, enlightment and death. What links these events is the radical and powerful message of all Buddhist teachings: We each have the potential to realize and live from and awakened heart and mind. This talk explores how the key mythological, psychological and spiritual junctures of the Buddha’s life are entirely relevant to our own transformation.

There are three spiritual capacities that are essential for our freedom. The first, forgiveness, is the releasing of stories that this self, or another, is bad. It is an opening of the heart to include all parts of our own being and this world. The second, inner fire, is the...

This talk focuses on the use of inquiry and investigation in energizing a lucid, mindful presence. The interest and care that underlies wise investigation is essential in both healing difficult emotional tangles and in revealing the very nature of reality. Guided meditation included.