8/21/2025 “The Buddhas’s Antidotes for Challenging Times: Introduction & Karuṇā (Compassion)” with Rich Howard

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This evening’s presentation is the first in a series of six offered by the SIM Faculty on “The Buddha’s Antidotes for Challenging Times.” Each presentation will explore a positive mind state that can be cultivated to bring happiness and contentment into our life while reducing the stress and dissatisfaction we cause ourselves and others. The faculty will conclude each session with questions for reflection, which will serve as prompts for the kalyāņamitta groups that SIM is forming (see the announcement elsewhere in this newsletter for details). From October 23 to 25, the faculty will offer an in-person mini-retreat to devote an extended practice period to each of these mind states, as well as further instruction on applying the practices in daily life.


In this first session, SIM Community Teacher Rich Howard will introduce the entire series, then focus on the quality of compassion (karunā in the ancient Pali language). With wisdom from Joanna Macy, Bhikkhu Anālayo, Andrea Gibson, the Dalai Lama, and others (offered as a handout for future reference), we will touch on what mindful compassion looks like, what it is not, and how to increase its appearance in our daily life.

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8/14/2025 “The Wisdom of Release: Trusting the Flow of Impermanence” with Adam Stonebraker

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Just as a lump of foam is empty, void, and without substance…” — Phena Sutta (SN 22.95)

In this powerful teaching, the Buddha invites us to see the impermanent, insubstantial nature of all experience—not as a reason for despair, but as a gateway to freedom. When we meet the changing flow of life with wisdom and care, the burden of clinging begins to dissolve. This talk will explore the Phena Sutta’s radical view of the five aggregates as empty like foam, bubbles, mirages, and illusions—and how this vision can guide us toward release, peace, and the unshakable heart.

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8/7/2025 “Embodied Compassion: Loving Awareness of the Aging, Ailing, and Mortal Body” with Jeff Hardin

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The Buddha named old age, sickness, and death as divine messengers—undeniable truths that call us to practice and open the path to awakening. In this Dharma talk, we will explore how embodied compassion can become a liberating practice as we face the realities of an impermanent and mortal body.


Drawing from the early teachings of the Buddha, guided reflections, and stories from Jeff’s work as a physician, we’ll investigate how cultivating kind and mindful awareness of the body can support insight, soften fear, open the heart, and deepen our capacity to meet life and death with wisdom and love.

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7/31/2025 “How Practice Changes Us, with a View from the Brain” with Rick Maddock

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In his teaching on the four foundations of mindfulness, the Buddha describes beneficial changes that result from cultivating these practices. This talk will explore many of the ways the mind can be shaped or transformed by our practice, including findings from modern neuroscience that converge with what the Buddha taught.

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7/24/2025 “Working with Fear and Anxiety” with Seth Castleman

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The dharma has much to teach us on how to work with the “afflictive emotions.” While fear and anxiety are a natural response to danger, they are often rooted in a misinterpretation of reality and become a habitual reaction. With practice, we can cultivate a more wholesome and healthy response, becoming more effective in managing the challenges we face, individually and collectively.

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7/17/2025 “Rooted in the Dharma: A Celebration of Generosity”

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Join us for a special evening of community and celebration as we mark the success of our Five-Year Pledge Campaign and look ahead to the opportunities unfolding in our sangha. Together, we’ll reflect on the generosity that sustains our shared path and explore what’s next in our collective journey of Dharma practice.

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7/10/2025 “Emptiness and Ethical Practice” with Tony Bernhard

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What does ethical practice mean in the context of anattā/not self?

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6/26/2025 “Listening to the Cries of the World” with Rich Howard

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It seems that the volume has been turned up in so many areas of modern life: political rhetoric, forceful opinions, horrific wars, ….  Listening to an inner voice becomes harder, and listening to others nearly impossible. Yet sustaining and developing our practice of mindful awareness requires listening to our heart’s subtle whispers, and applying that practice in the world requires listening to the cries of the world to find where compassion is needed most. In addition, our relationships require a deep listening to spoken and silent expressions of connection. We will explore the inner and outer practices of listening and look for applications in our meditation practice and our daily life.

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6/19/2025 “On Thought and Thinking” with Dennis Warren

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Many practitioners relate to thought and thinking as obstacles to meditation and daily life practice. This evening, in contrast, will explore the Historical Buddha’s teachings that thought and thinking can be functions of wisdom.

The Buddha’s vision emphasizes the qualities of intention and discernment in thinking as guides for creating, and testing, a sound conceptual framework for practice. This approach includes mindful and intuitive reflection on the results or outcomes of one’s efforts. Thinking and thought can become powerful tools for developing clarity, deepening insight, and supporting ethical conduct.

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6/12/2025 “Understanding The Four Noble Truths” with Walt Opie

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According to Bhikkhu Bodhi, it is said that “the purpose of the Buddha’s appearance in the world… is to proclaim the four noble truths.” This was also the Buddha’s very first teaching where he “set in motion the wheel of the dhamma.”

We will explore these four truths of suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the way leading to the cessation of suffering, and see how they can apply to modern life. 

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