Sharon Allen is a long time practitioner and teacher of mindfulness meditation and different forms of movement. She taught Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for many years. Sharon leads several on-going meditation groups that explore spiritual development through meditation, study, and reflection. Sharon encourages the integration of mindfulness in dealing with life’s ever-changing events. When it is suitable, Sharon offers the movement practices of Tai Chi and Qi Gong to enhance mindfulness. These movement practices can be adapted and are beneficial for people with varied physical capabilities.
This talk was given as a part of the series "Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living." This talk described what helps us to stay motivated in our meditation practice, and the importance of knowing ourselves inside and out as a part of that motivational factor.
This series of talks provides insight and practical advice as to how to take the wonderful and serene mind that we develop during our meditation practice into our daily lives, into our relationships with others. Sometimes, the deepest grooves in our minds are only stimulated in our relationships to others. Defilements and habits of the mind, such as greed, anger and delusion, arise in ways that they don't in other situations. Fortunately, these daily life encounters offer us opportunities to practice, to see ourselves more clearly, and to become more free. This is the liberating power of awareness and mindfulness.
Cultivating the faculty of wisdom is an important element for our meditation practice to deepen. Through a sincere meditation practice and understanding of the Four Noble Truths, deep presence and clarity arise enabling us to discern firsthand the causes of suffering and to engage a remedy for a beneficial resolution. Investigating Right View and Right Intention trains the mind in the development, understanding, and expression of how things actually are. Wisdom comes when the heart and mind are not clinging to nor resisting what is occurring in experience.
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness provide a valuable exploration of the three characteristics—impermanence (annica), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and not self (anatta). Mindfulness practice—presence with equanimity—helps us to gain knowledge and insight that nothing can be held onto as permanent, that all experiences are ultimately unsatisfactory, and that there is no fixed self at the heart of all experience. These insights free the mind of all resistance to things being as they are.
Mindfulness of Right Intention is a noble gift which strengthens ethical and mental development. According to the Samma Sankappa sutta, Right Intention carries three main expressions: the intentions of renunciation, good will, and harmlessness. These intentions counter desire, ill will, and harmfulness. By directing our meditation practice toward Right Intention we increase our ability to see with greater wisdom and act more skillfully in daily life. The mind and body are more at ease in the world.
As human beings, our developed higher functioning mind can think, reflect, and observe how we add mental preferences of liking, not liking or feeling indifferent to what is occurring. This talk explores how our emotional responses to experience can—and surely must—be part of a path to liberation. Emotions do not have to derail us from an intention to free the mind from struggle. By skillfully engaging a mindfulness practice we can break down our experience into smaller, more manageable pieces to free ourselves from the tangle of desire and craving for things to be as we want them, rather than how they are. We find liberation within the emotional landscape.
This collection of talks given at Insight Meditation South Bay discusses the nature of emotions. Topics include how to work with shame, dread, fear and anger.
Compassionate living (Karuna) requires a willingness to open to suffering. This meditation is part of a five week series on compassion given at IMSB. Each class emphasized the different elements of the practice.
Compassion is a heartfelt and courageous response to life. Karuna is the manifestation of loving kindness when it meets the pain of the world. This meditation steadies the mind on this moment with an intention of Loving Kindness. This is part of a five week series on compassion given at IMSB.
The teachers at Insight Meditation South Bay frequently guide meditation for the community. These recordings vary in length and style. They may include instructions for specific meditation techniques, introduce a dhamma theme, offer general mindfulness reminders, or present meditation instructions at the beginning of an otherwise silent session.
Please listen to these recordings in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Turn off your phone, and settle into a comfortable meditative posture. Plan to meditate for 30-45 minutes even if the recording is brief and verbal instructions last for only a few minutes. You may enjoy brief recordings at the beginning of meditation session, and then continue to meditate in silence for as long as you wish. Silent periods during longer recordings are intentional; moments of silence allow time for you to practice the instructions that were previously explained.
