To download this talk, right-click and select ‘save audio as’ or select the 3-dot menu to the right of the speaker icon.

The Historical Buddha was clear about his message concerning the importance of thought: What we think about, so we incline the mind. We make the world with our thoughts.

Thoughts are so powerful because they shape our beliefs, assumptions, and expectations. They act as lenses thru which we perceive and understand the world. When these become fixed – and they usually do – we have the same experience over-and-over even though the circumstances and persons keep changing.

This phenomenon – fixed thoughts and views shaping our lives and resulting in suffering – is at the center of Buddhist psychology and practice. This Thursday evening will explore this field of experiences through common situations in meditation and everyday living. The subject matter of this evening will be appropriate for all stages of practice.

Family Sangha Program

Have you seen the latest Newsletter from the Sacramento Dharma Center? If not, click here to access the newsletter and optionally sign up to receive future issues. The February newsletter includes the topics:

  • “The Value of Witnessing”: An Inter-Sangha Pilgrimage to the South
  • Racial and Social Justice as Dharma Practice
To download this talk, right-click and select ‘save audio as’ or select the 3-dot menu to the right of the speaker icon.

The main person who gets in the way of allowing us to feel sympathetic joy (mudita in Pali) and gratitude is you know who. Often we compare ourselves to others and find we don’t measure up in some way. Envy and jealousy are the opposites of sympathetic joy. The Buddha encouraged us to challenge our assumptions and to cultivate this capacity to find joy in the good fortune of others. Ajahn Pasanno says, “Cutting through self-view is the Buddha’s unique contribution to spiritual practice. Mudita is antithetical to the self-view that we carry around with us and leads us to a place of boundless and immeasurable joy.”

To download this talk, right-click and select ‘save audio as’ or select the 3-dot menu to the right of the speaker icon.
The volunteer maximum has been reached. Thank you to everyone for offering your help.
Family Sangha Program

The Sacramento Dharma Center Library committee is looking for two to three new members to help organize, update, and maintain the existing books and resources in the library. We’re hoping for a commitment of approximately 3 to 4 hours a month initially (for 2 to 3 months), until all the books are shelved and catalogued. As we move into the maintenance phase of simply tracking check-out and returning library materials, much less time will be required. 
If interested, please contact Jody Ansell at 916-716-6593 or Ann Kronser at 608-220-2447.

To download this talk, right-click and select ‘save audio as’ or select the 3-dot menu to the right of the speaker icon.

We rightly place strong emphasis on mindfulness of the body and mindfulness of mind states in our practice of meditation and everyday awareness. These are the first and third ways of establishing mindfulness as described in the Satipatthana Sutta, one of the core teachings of our Insight tradition. Sometimes overlooked is the Second Foundation of Mindfulness: mindfulness of feeling tone (vedana in Pali). A feeling tone of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral accompanies every experience, physical or mental. Unnoticed, these feeling tones can escalate to desire, aversion, or delusion and cause us to suffer. When noticed, they can lead us to expand our range of situations where we can feel okay, regardless of outside circumstances. On this evening, we will explore vedana in our guided meditation and in the dharma talk and following discussion. Rich encourages you to practice noticing vedana in the week leading up to this evening, so you can report directly from your experience in the discussion session. If you are unfamiliar with the practice and need instruction, email Rich Howard.

SIM is grateful for all our donors and we’ve already emailed tax letters to those who’ve donated $250 or more in 2023. If you have not received the tax letter (dated Jan 21 or Jan 22, 2024) and you think you should have, please check your email Inbox, as well as your Spam or Junk folders. If you still don’t find it, please contact GregG@sactoinsight.org.

To download this talk, right-click and select ‘save audio as’ or select the 3-dot menu to the right of the speaker icon.

Our minds tend to see the world as dualistic. Life – personal, relationship, financial, political choices – seems to be limited to two dimensional competing alternatives, an either/or proposition.

Unless we pause and step back from the drama of the moment, we lose touch with the nuance, beauty, and multi-dimensional nature of life, and life choices. We fail to see and experience the underlying reality that the world operates on a wide continuum of related and inter-dependent events, experiences, and choices.

We lose access to the most important, skillful, and healing life option – collaborating with life as it is, and collaborating with others as they are.

This Thursday evening will explore this field of experiences through common situations in meditation and everyday living.

The subject matter of this evening will be appropriate for all stages of practice.

January 25, 2024 @ 9:00 pm 11:59 pm PST

Uposatha Observance with SIM Community Teacher Rich Howard

For biographical details about the teacher Rich Howard click here.

* This in-person event is not available via Zoom.

Uposatha Observance: a Full Moon Practice Session
Buddhist communities worldwide celebrate the four phases of the moon with special practice sessions. On this full moon night, Rich will lead a practice session after our regular Thursday evening event. We will have periods of sitting meditation and group walking, traditional Buddhist chants, and maybe a Buddhist bedtime story! Feel free to stay for all or part of this special offering. 

January 18, 2024 @ 7:30 pm 7:45 pm PST

Join us to honor and thank beloved sangha member Margaret Buss for her long-term service as the SIM Volunteer Coordinator. As part of the regular evening program, we will take some time to show Margaret our gratitude.

Treats and tea will be offered during the Sit & Dharma talk break. Come and be part of the festivities.