(Remote) Introduction to Meditation with Rich Howard

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To join this remote meeting, note the following:

Join Online: https://zoom.us/j/98472083249
Passcode: 339312
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 984 7208 3249 )
For instructions on how to join the meeting, click here.

This 45-minute course is suitable for beginners or anyone who would like a refresher. It is offered on the fourth Thursday of every month before the regular sitting and dharma talk. There is no fee.

Rich Howard

RICH HOWARD has been an active practitioner and volunteer at SIM since 2004. His area of interest is bringing meditative awareness into everyday life. He participated in SIM’s 2007 India Pilgrimage and is a graduate of SIM’s second Practice Development and Leadership (PDL) program. He served on the Board from 2010 until 2015, the last two years as president. He was one of the SIM representatives to the Inter-Sangha Coordinating Committee, predecessor to the Sacramento Dharma Center Board, which now runs our shared space for Buddhist sanghas in Sacramento. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in southern Africa in the 1970s and is fluent in Spanish. His teachers are Dennis Warren, Tony Bernhard, and Steve Armstrong. Rich completed online courses with Steve on the Abhidhamma (the Buddhist psychology) and the Manual of Insight. He took Gil Fronsdal’s online course on the Majjhima Nikaya (Middle-length Discourses of the Buddha). His interest in the environment led him to the One Small Planet training with Kerry Nelson and the Ecosattva training with One Earth Sangha. In 2018, he completed a 10-month Dhamma Awareness Training with Steve Armstrong and Kamala Masters called Touching the Earth. In 2019, he completed Meg Gawler’s 8-month course Preparing the Ground for Samadhi.

Sacramento Insight Meditation events are sustained by the generosity of instructors in offering teachings freely and on the generosity of students and members of the meditative community in the form of financial support, service and participation in events. With our practice of dana, we support our Sangha. If you wish to make a donation, click here.

At the bottom of this page, you may enter the number of people planning to attend and select the button “Confirm RSVP“.
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(Remote) Sit & Dharma Talk – Greg Scharf – Javana Hamsa: The Swift Swan

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Javana Hamsa: The Swift Swan
Sit & Dharma Talk with Visiting Senior Teacher Greg Scharf

Note that this talk begins at 6:30 PM, which is 30 minutes earlier than our regular program time.

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/97088965307
Passcode: 858309
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 970 8896 5307 )
For tips and instructions on how to participate, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana

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“Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
For remote meetings, please use the form below to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and 100% of your donation will be shared with Greg Scharf.

Greg Scharf, an Insight Meditation Society guiding teacher, has practiced with Western and Asian teachers in the Theravada tradition since 1992. He has been teaching residential retreats since 2007, including the annual Three-Month Retreat at IMS. Greg’s love of nature and the outdoors deeply informs both his practice and teaching.

 

 

Topic Details
Tonight Greg will use a Jataka story (Javana Hamsa: The Swift Swan) as an introduction to a talk on insight into impermanence and its relationship to what the Buddha called “An Independent Abiding”.

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(Remote) Sit & Dharma Talk – Dennis Warren – Experiencing Emptiness of Self

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Experiencing Emptiness of Self and Its’ Practical, Every-Day Implications

Sit & Dharma Talk with SIM Founding Teacher Dennis Warren

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/92605207107
Passcode: 529339
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 926 0520 7107 )
For tips and instructions on how to participate, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana
[give_form id=”10310″ show_title=”false” show_content=”none” display_style=”reveal”] “Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
For remote meetings, please use the form above to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and 75% of your donation will be shared with Dennis Warren.

Topic details:
Understanding and experiencing the teaching on the Emptiness-of-Self (“No-Self” / “Anatta”) is considered is to be defining and transformative. But having the actual experience that makes this teaching immediate, direct and relevant to every-day life and relationships seems to elude us.
The focus of this Thursday night’s discussions will explore the Emptiness-of-Self through 4 questions:

  • Why is it considered so important from a practical perspective?
  • What is (and is not) the experience of Emptiness-of-Self?
  • What impact does the experience of Emptiness-Of-Self have on our understanding of ourselves, our relationships, our behavior and our place in the world?
  • What methods can help us understand and directly experience Emptiness-Of-Self in meditation and everyday life more often and more tangibly?

Community teacher, Rich Howard, gave an excellent traditional overview of the teaching on “no-self” or “anatta” on Thursday, February 4 under the topic of “Finding and Losing Yourself.” Dennis’ discussion this Thursday will be on the same teaching but from a different perspective and emphasis. Rich’s talk is posted to SIM’s Audio Dharma Library (click here).
The subject matter of this evening is appropriate for all stages of practice. All that is necessary is showing up with an open, questioning mind.

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(Remote) Sit & Dharma Talk – Dennis Warren – Reconsidering Mindfulness

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Reconsidering Mindfulness

Sit & Dharma Talk with SIM Founding Teacher Dennis Warren

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/96240423883
Passcode: 890319
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 962 4042 3883 )
For tips and instructions on how to participate, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana
[give_form id=”10310″ show_title=”false” show_content=”none” display_style=”reveal”] “Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
For remote meetings, please use the form above to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and 75% of your donation will be shared with Dennis Warren.

Topic details:
Mindfulness is the operational centerpiece of good practice, sound problem solving and living well. It supports and enables all the different teachings, methods and psychology of the historical Buddha which are designed to help us live a rich, full, satisfying life.
One way of understanding mindfulness is that it has two interlocking dimensions: One is practical and functional. The other is oriented towards awakening or liberation. As a community practitioner, we can inadvertently slip into the habit of relating to mindfulness, and practice itself, as only functional and practical.
When this happens, mindfulness and practice can become self-restricting and self-limiting. Such an approach can accidently obscure, and potentially cut us off from, spontaneous discovery and the deep, intuitive, healing wisdom of our bodies and hearts. We can become disconnected from the beauty and power inherent in exploring the mystery, and the dilemma, of being human, of being in relationships and of being alive on this planet.
This is the territory we’ll explore on Thursday evening: functional mindfulness; awakening or liberating mindfulness; and the unifying and inspiring experience at the center of practice which is beyond words, language and concepts.
The subject matter of this evening is appropriate for all stages of practice. All that is necessary is showing up with an open, questioning mind.

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(Remote) Sit & Dharma Talk – JD Doyle – Cultivating Fearlessness

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Cultivating Fearlessness

Sit & Dharma Talk with Visiting Teacher JD Doyle

Cultivating fearlessness can be a powerful tool for working with the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion.

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/99948329853
Passcode: 760192
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 999 4832 9853 )
For tips and instructions on how to participate, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana
[give_form id=”17844″ show_title=”false” show_content=”none” display_style=”reveal”] “Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
For remote meetings, please use the form above to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and 75% of your donation will be shared with JD Doyle.

 

JD Doyle serves as a Core Teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, CA, has completed 8 years of training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.. JD has practiced Buddhism since 1995 in the U.S., Thailand, and Burma. For over twenty years, they worked as a public school teacher. JD holds a BS in Environmental Studies from Cornell University and a Masters in Language and Literacy and Sociocultural Studies from the University of New Mexico. JD identifies as genderqueer. They are committed to celebrating diversity, addressing racial injustice, expanding concepts of gender, and honoring the sacredness of the Earth. For more information visit www.heartmindteaching.com.

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(Remote) Sit & Dharma Talk – Rich Howard – Finding and Losing Your Self

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Who Am I? What Do I Want? What Do I Believe?: Finding and Losing Your Self

Sit & Dharma Talk with SIM Community Teacher Rich Howard

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/97449478347
Passcode: 444641
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 974 4947 8347 )
For tips and instructions on how to participate, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana
[give_form id=”10304″ show_title=”false” show_content=”none” display_style=”reveal”] “Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
For remote meetings, please use the form above to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and 75% of your donation will be shared with Rich Howard.

Topic details:
The Buddhist concept of “not self” can be very confusing if we let it linger as a subject of philosophical speculation or distant conceptual notion. On the other hand, the Buddha taught the illusion of self (anatta in Pali) as one of the three universal characteristics of experience, along with impermanence and unsatisfactoriness; living an embodied insight into how this process works is one avenue to awakening.
Two of the basic processes we have taught often at SIM offer ways of seeing into how we construct and maintain the sense of self: the five aggregates of clinging and dependent origination. In this presentation, Rich will share some other approaches from classes he attended with Steve Armstrong and Kamala Masters at the Vipassana Metta Foundation and Jay Garfield at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. We will place particular emphasis on the ethical and liberating aspects of these teachings.

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(Remote) Sit & Dharma Talk – Rich Howard – Finding Happiness

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Finding Happiness: the Maha-Mangala Sutta

Sit & Dharma Talk with SIM Community Teacher Rich Howard

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/98148807545
Passcode: 212082
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 981 4880 7545 )
For tips and instructions on how to participate, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana
[give_form id=”10304″ show_title=”false” show_content=”none” display_style=”reveal”] “Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
For remote meetings, please use the form above to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and 75% of your donation will be shared with Rich Howard.

Topic details:

As the days wane and the nights get longer, Rich will bring reflections on the “greatest blessings” from the Maha-Mangala Sutta (Sutta Nipata 2.4). This beloved sutta reminds us that, even in the midst of loss and grief, our ordinary lives contain so many sources of happiness. In balancing our awareness of suffering with the uplifting conditions in life, we come closer to seeing things as they are. This awareness provides a balance to our daily life practice and a motivation for skillful action in the world.

Rich last offered a reflection on this sutta four years ago, as we moved into the Sacramento Dharma Center. Now that we are not able to be there in person, let’s bring these blessings to mind again.

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(Remote) Sit & Dharma Talk – Diane Wilde – How Conceited are YOU?

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How Conceited are YOU?

Sit & Dharma Talk with SIM Community Teacher Rev. Diane Wilde

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/92499166835
Passcode: 123816
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 924 9916 6835 )
For tips and instructions on how to participate, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana

[give_form id=”9758″ show_title=”false” show_content=”none” display_style=”reveal”]

“Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
We recognize that donating by cash or check at the time you attend this event may not always be convenient for you. If that’s the case, please use the form below to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and 75% of your donation will be shared with Rev. Diane Wilde.

Topic details:
Conceit (“māna” in Pali) has a special meaning in the Buddha’s teachings; it has a broader and more profound definition than “stuck up”… the definition we usually associate with this word. Conceit in Buddhism can mean feeling superior, inferior, or the same as others. In other words, it is our habitual comparison of ourselves to others. Conceit is also the delusion that our experiences ARE ourselves, and that our self has boundaries and solid substance. According to the Pali canon, conceit is among the last defilements to fall away before full awakening. It is subtle and difficult to observe within ourselves… much easier to see in others! When we begin to experience conceit as it really is, we also begin understand and experience anatta: “No permanent self”.

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(Remote) *Sit & Dharma Talk – Diane Wilde – Forgiveness…

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Forgiveness… What if you are not forgiven?
A Discussion and a True Story

Sit & Dharma Talk with SIM Community Teacher Rev. Diane Wilde and guest Edwin Paragas

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/92579615275
Passcode: 668643
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 925 7961 5275 )
For tips and instructions on how to participate, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana

[give_form id=”9758″ show_title=”false” show_content=”none” display_style=”reveal”]

“Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
We recognize that donating by cash or check at the time you attend this event may not always be convenient for you. If that’s the case, please use the form below to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and 75% of your donation will be shared with Rev. Diane Wilde.

Topic details:
Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness or not. It’s a state of mind that our culture and most faith traditions hold as a positive and worthwhile aspiration. Buddhism sees forgiveness a little differently. We will discuss those differences and the practicality of the Buddhist definition of forgiveness.

Edwin Paragas was recently released from twenty years of incarceration beginning when he was sixteen years old. He will tell the story of his own search for forgiveness from his victim’s family and his life now as a returning citizen.

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(Remote) Sit & Dharma Talk – Heather Sundberg – Cultivating Deeper Refuge

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Cultivating Deeper Refuge through Resiliency in the Face of Collective Reactivity

Sit & Dharma Talk with Visiting Teacher Heather Sundberg

Join online meeting: https://zoom.us/j/92810833253
Passcode: 001210
Join by phone: 1-669-900-6833 ( Meeting ID: 928 1083 3253 )
For tips and instructions to join the meeting, check this news blog.

Thursday Night Talk Dana
“Generosity is the virtue that leads to peace.” – The Historical Buddha
[give_form id=”4336″ show_title=”false” show_goal=”false” show_content=”none” display_style=”reveal”] For remote meetings, please use the form above to donate by credit card or your PayPal account. Enter the amount you’d like to give and this donation will be shared 100% with Heather Sundberg.

This talk will not be recorded.

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