There are so many crisis happening simultaneously, at the personal as well as collective level. Learning to practice with the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion is essential to transform suffering into healing and liberation.
Choice plays a pivotal role in the architecture of Buddhist practice. For example, it surfaces in the five strategies for dealing with distracting thoughts, the four types of Right Effort, and the five ways of letting go or abandoning unskillful states of mind. Each set of options asks that we weight the circumstances and select a course of action.
And yet, curiously, the Pali Canon — that vast record of the Historical Buddha’s psychology, teachings and methods — contains no word or phrase equivalent to our conventional sense of “choice.”
This reflects the Historical Buddha’s tendency to redirect attention away from the surface of a question towards what he considered its root. If choice, as commonly understood, is not the true axis of decision-making, then what is? And what might this reveal, as a practical matter, about the nature of skillful decision making and how it can be embodied in practice and life?
The Jataka Tales are folksy stories of the past lives of the being who would become Siddhattha Gotama and eventually the historical Buddha. To become a Buddha, this being had to perfect the ten qualities known as “Paramis” (or “Perfections”), and each tale tells how one or more of the Paramis was developed in a particular past life, as an animal or human. The Mahā-Sīlava Jātaka is particularly rich in its inclusion of the Paramis, so we will listen to the story and reflect on which qualities are illustrated and how the story informs our understanding of them.
This will be a talk on how to work skillfully with thoughts while we are practicing insight meditation. The Buddha warned us about how mental proliferation (papanca in Pali) can be a formidable obstacle to progress on the path.
We will explore the Buddhist teaching of Mudita: what it is, what it isn’t and how to cultivate it. In watering the seeds of delight and joy in our lives as part of our spiritual practice, we begin to recognize that happiness grows when it is shared.
Clear comprehension (sampajañña in Pali) is an essential part of the mindfulness practices taught by the Buddha. It brings awareness to how our actions of body, speech and mind are always shaping the person we are becoming. Tonight’s talk will explore this practice and include a neuroscience perspective on becoming aware of our intentions and their suitability.
Sometimes clear seeing gets confused with criticism. This talk explores what becomes possible when honesty is joined with kindness.
Mindfulness is often described as paying attention to the present moment. Yet throughout the early Buddhist teachings, the Buddha presents mindfulness and clear comprehension together. Over time, we begin to recognize how these two qualities work in partnership: mindfulness helps us know what is happening, while clear comprehension reveals what we might otherwise overlook.We’ll explore how this deepening understanding supports greater wisdom, responsiveness, and care in our daily lives.