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Dharma Talks
given at Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
Publicly available talks can be browsed here in the order indicated by
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Get the latest Dharma talks from Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley by Podcast
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2023-01-23
Is your meditation stagnating? Here's why.
64:27
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Ajahn Brahmali
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We can develop the causes and conditions that will support our meditation practice. Virtue and right view are important foundations that guide our practice toward its liberating potential. Skillfully working with the five hindrances, particularly the forces of sensual desire and ill will, support the development of the seven awakening factors. By cultivating these conducive conditions, concentration and insight develop.
- Note: the first couple of minutes of this talk have some slight acoustic issues which resolve after a few minutest.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2022-11-22
Advice to the Dying: Don’t Cling to Anything
22:04
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Shaila Catherine
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This guided meditation offers a comprehensive training in non-attachment and letting go. The instructions list various objects and perceptions that one might be attached to, and recommend that we train ourselves to not cling to each item. It follows the advice that Venerable Sariputta offered to the lay disciple Anathapindika on his deathbed. It is essentially a reading of the discourse of Advice to Anathapindika (Middle Length Discourses 143) with some comments.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2022-04-12
Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Free the Mind
29:30
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Shaila Catherine
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On the occasion of the publication of her third book, Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Free the Mind, Shaila Catherine shares a progressive series of strategies to overcome the hindrances of restlessness, obsessive thinking, and rumination; dispel thoughts of anger, hatred, and anxiety; and curb habitual distractions. By freeing the mind from the fetter of restlessness, meditators can calm their minds, develop tranquility, strengthen concentration, create the conditions for jhana, comprehend the nature of the mind, experience emptiness, and incline the mind toward liberating insight and nibbana. These teachings are based on two suttas (19 and 20) in the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2021-05-11
Practical Dharma
42:19
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Lila Kate Wheeler
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The Buddha’s teachings are often compared to a finger pointing to the moon. Without that finger, we might never lift our gaze and see for ourselves. Tonight’s talk offers encouragement to stay present and awake as a lived experience so that we can lead a more centered, caring, ethical life. As Dharma practitioners, we make efforts to be more present for the experiences in ourselves and others. As we do so we’ll surely hear and see things we didn’t expect or want. Here, the teaching of the five hindrances supports us to shift our gaze yet again, recognize more clearly and respond differently when wisdom and caring are weakened. With these skills, we will know for sure there is no bad habit or difficult situation that cannot be softened and worked with—even liberated.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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Tuesday Talks
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2021-05-04
Emptiness and Suchness
43:09
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Heather Sundberg
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When we understand that direct experience is not solid/not separate, we can embrace experience in its changing conditionality with the heart of compassion and inclusion born of non-clinging. This is the inter-weaving of the teachings of emptiness and suchness, and the talk will explore teachings and practices which support us to live from this wiser view.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2021-04-20
Relating Wisely to this Sensual World
1:12:40
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Mark Nunberg
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The Buddha’s teachings encourage us to cultivate an intimate ongoing mindful presence, a deep respect for cause and effect, and a profound equanimity as we live our sensual embodied lives. The Buddha asks us to directly discern the very real experience of gratification, the inevitable stress that arises with any attachment to sensuality, and the deepening insight of the heart’s release from the burning of craving and dependence that we experience in our wiser moments.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2021-04-06
Refraining from Intoxication
22:44
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk explores the fifth precept: the commitment to refrain from intoxicating the mind through the use of alcohol, drugs, or addictive desires. Originally this precept highlighted the dangers of home-brewed alcohol, but can be expanded to address the many ways we may seek to excite, dull, distort, or intoxicate our minds. By working with this precept, we not only strengthen our capacity for restraint, but importantly, we investigate how the force of craving may be affecting our decisions and actions.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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