Talks: Reflections on the Path

Our capacity to listen deeply–to our inner life and each other–is the grounds of true understanding and love. This talk explores the challenges to listening and guidelines and practices that awaken a listening heart.

This talk explores a Tibetan teaching through reflection and guided meditations: Our true nature–our inherent wakefuness, openness and love–is closer than we can imagine; it is more profound than we can imagine; it is easier than we can imagine; and it is more wondrous than we can imagine.

When we don’t trust who we are, we are unable to be at home in our world. This talk explores how we come to be at war with ourselves and the pathway to realizing our basic goodness.

We suffer when our words or actions arise from unconscious wants and fears. This talk explores how we can awaken from the habitual ways we cause harm to ourselves and others, and live from our natural intelligence and tender warmth.

These two talks [part 1 last week] explore how we leave our bodies, the challenge of working with pain, the pathway home to embodied awareness, and the gifts of presence and aliveness.

These two talks explore how we leave our bodies, the challenge of working with pain, the pathway home to embodied awareness, and the gifts of presence and aliveness.

The tendency to think “life should be different” and to try to control experience removes us from the wisdom and compassion that naturally gives rise to healing and transformation. We learn to trust the power of our heart and awareness by meeting both the pain and beauty of this life with sacred presence.

The Buddha taught of three archetypal domains in which we awaken presence and realize freedom. In contrast to our habitual false refuges, these gateways of true refuge are dependable because they express the timeless truth of what we are. This talk shines a light on false refuges, guides us in exploring the meaning of each of the three Buddhist refuges and ends in a ritual of “taking refuge.”

Spiritual practice reveals our belonging through bringing presence to three gateways: the aliveness of the present moment, loving relatedness, and the openness and lucidity of awareness itself. This talk includes guided meditations in exploring each gateway. Note: poem, “She Dreamed of Cows” is by Norah Pollard

There are times when there is so much fear and reactivity, that the first step in moving toward freedom is to connect with some sense of safety and love. This talk explores how an inner pathway to loving presence can support us in facing and awakening through traumatic wounding.

Zen mast Dogen taught that “…to study the Buddhist way is to be Intimate with all Things.” This talk reviews the often unconscious ways that we habitually block intimacy and two trainings of attention that foster a natural sense of belonging to this living world and to timeless presence.

Spiritual awakening is energized by conscious intention. This talk explores how we get waylaid by habitual wants and fears, and the ways we can connect with the power and purity of our deep aspiration for love, truth and freedom.

The development of a mask or persona based on our activities and roles is a natural way the ego tries to protect and enhance itself. Yet unless we wake up from our identification with the mask, we are unable to discover the truth and wholeness of what we are. This talk investigates how our masks manifest and the process of wise attention that can free us from a limiting sense of separate self. Includes a guided meditation.

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.