Tag Archive for: Rich Howard

12/29/2016 “Reflection at Year’s End: The Paramis” with Rich Howard

REFLECTION AT YEAR’S END: THE PARAMIS

For SIM’s last Thursday gathering, we will take time to reflect quietly together on the past year in terms of the Paramis, those qualities that lead to peace when cultivated and perfected. Rather than evaluating or judging, we will then use this reflection to assess our strengths and weaknesses as a way of setting intentions for our practice in the coming New Year. Join the SIM community one last evening in 2016 for a time of silence, sharing, reflection, and community.

To view the handout for this talk, listing the ten Paramis, click here.

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12/08/2016 “The Greatest Blessing” with Rich Howard

The Greatest Blessing: Reflecting on the Maha-Mangala Sutta Seeing things as they are requires opening both to life’s pain and to life’s gifts. For his first presentation in our new home at Sacramento Dharma Center this Thursday, Rich will bring reflections on the blessings listed in the Maha-Mangala Sutta. This beloved sutta reminds us that our ordinary lives contain so many sources of happiness, many of which we may overlook. Bringing awareness to these blessings provides a balance to our…

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Here is the lyric-poem that Rich recited during this talk: Love Minus Zero by Bob Dylan

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10/06/2016 “Depends on What?” with Rich Howard

Depends on What?: An Exploration of Causes and Conditions

You may have heard about the importance of “causes and conditions” but what does that mean to our practice in formal meditation and daily life? Can we learn to recognize how causes and conditions work in our lives experientially without making it into an intellectual analysis? What would it be like to know a peace that does not depend on outside circumstances?

Rich Howard will lead this evening exploring the practical application of the Buddhist understanding of conditionality. As a start, notice how the experience of finding a parking place near the Friends’ Meeting House affects your mood!
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SIM 2016 Residential Retreat

SIM 2016 Residential Retreat with Dennis Warren, Diane Wilde, and Rich Howard.2016 SIM Retreat Summary

** If you would like to download any of the following dharma talks, please right click on the talk’s link “talk x of y” and select “save as”.

“An integrated path of practice (1)” – talk 1 of 7 with Dennis Warren

“Metta” – talk 2 of 7 with Diane Wilde

“Compassion” – talk 3 of 7 with Rich Howard

“An integrated path of practice (2) Key elements” – talk 4 of 7 with Dennis Warren

“Sympathetic joy” – talk 5 of 7 with Diane Wilde

“Equanimity” – talk 6 of 7 with Rich Howard

“An integrated path of practice (3) Spiritual and Daily Life” – talk 7 of 7 with Dennis Warren

 

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08/25/2016 “Analog or Digital?” with Rich Howard

Nature is a seamless whole, flowing and changing continuously. The world we inhabit is increasingly digital, measured, quantified, and reduced to numbers and words. How do you think of your practice? Minutes on the cushion? Days in retreat? Years of practice? Or does the practice flow through every waking moment? We spend this evening examining our view of practice as analog or digital. We  ask ourselves if it makes a difference. We think about our own practice and discuss how it might be digital, analog, neither, or both. And how that serves our life and the world.


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07/07/16: “The Practice of Gratitude,” with Rich Howard

This evening we discussed gratitude in the context of the Highest Blessings or Causes for Happiness found in the Maha-mangala Sutta. For those interested in reading this short and original sutta, you may find it at here:

“Maha-mangala Sutta: Blessings” (Sn 2.4), translated from the Pali by Piyadassi Thera. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.2.04.piya.html .

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05/05/16: ” Causes and Conditions,” by Rich Howard

What do the Battle of Puebla, an allergic attack, and the Cycle of Reactivity (aka Dependent Origination) have in common? Using a lesser known teaching on Dependent Origination from the Kalahavivada Sutta (Sutta Nipata IV 11), we explore the world of causes and conditions, actions, reactions, and over-reactions. Our focus is on using awareness of reactivity to reduce suffering we cause to ourself and others in daily life.

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03-24-16: “Satipatthana Sutta,” with Rich Howard

Looking at the Discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (MN 10, the Satipatthana Sutta), we arrive at perhaps the single most important description of how and why we practice meditation. The many practices described in this discourse form the basis for SIM’s Introduction to Meditation course and most Vipassana (insight) meditation retreats. SIM spent almost two years from March 2009 through December 2010 examining this subject in depth, and many excellent book-length studies are available (including Joseph Goldstein’s Mindfulness, Bhikkhu Analayo’s Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization, and U Silananda’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness). So what could be gained from looking at this text for a single night? In our continuing exploration of the Suttas That Speak to Us, SIM Community Mentor Rich Howard approaches the Satipatthana Sutta as if in conversation with a good friend, looking literally at how it speaks to us as practitioners of insight meditation.

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