Seven Factors of Awakening 1: Mindfulness, Investigation, Energy
Date: 2023-02-16 Thursday
For the next two weeks, Feb. 16 and March 2, we’ll be exploring the seven factors of awakening. These seven are aspects of mind we may already be familiar with, but they take on new light, and life, when considered in the context of awakening.
They are:
Mindfulness (sati, Sanskrit smṛti). To maintain awareness of reality, in particular the teachings (Dhamma).
Investigation of the nature of reality (dhamma vicaya, Skt. dharmapravicaya).
Energy (viriya, Skt. vīrya) also determination, effort
Joy or rapture (pīti, Skt. prīti)
Relaxation or tranquility (passaddhi, Skt. prashrabdhi) of both body and mind
Concentration (samādhi) a calm, one-pointed state of mind,[1] or "bringing the buried latencies or samskaras into full view"[2]
Equanimity (upekkhā, Skt. upekshā). To accept reality as-it-is (yathā-bhuta) without craving or aversion
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Keeping Practice Alive in 2023
Date: 2023-01-19 Thursday
This sit we’ll explore keeping our dharma practice vital in 2023.
How do we keep our sense of direction, find inspiration, and keep going through the dry patches? (Hint…those arid bits are often secret doorways to next steps in growth.)
It’s just through this process of learning how to keep going, how to inspire ourselves, that we become self-sufficient on the path, able to inspire others.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Fresh Starts and Five Hindrances
Date: 2023-01-05 Thursday
In this sit, we’ll focus on a key understanding of the spiritual path, which is that it can be difficult in the beginning, and easy in the end.
In a way this may seem self-evident, because the very purpose of the path is to develop freedom irrespective of conditions. As we all know, conditions are undependable, and often difficult. But actually it’s baked into the very essence of what the path is – encountering obstacles and clinging and freeing ourselves of them – that things will be inherently harder in the beginning.
Fully realizing this is a freedom in itself, and brings with it tools to make this difficult beginning…easier.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Cultivating Wholesome Mind States
Date: 2022-11-17 Thursday
For November we’re exploring the wholesome and unwholesome mental qualities, and what we can do to cultivate the wholesome, and reduce the unwholesome. This is an important doorway onto the path, because our states of mind dictate how we understand the world, ourselves and each other.
Here’s one link with some perspectives on these teachings.
For this upcoming sit, we’ll explore cultivating the wholesome mental states, and how this can be a boon in our lives and our practice.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Reducing Unwholesome Mind States
Date: 2022-11-03 Thursday
For November we’re going to be exploring the wholesome and unwholesome mental qualities, and what we can do to cultivate the wholesome, and reduce the unwholesome. This is an important doorway onto the path, because our states of mind dictate how we understand the world, ourselves and each other.
Here’s one link with some perspectives on these teachings.
For this upcoming sit, we’ll be starting with exploring reducing the unwholesome, a core consideration in our progress on the path.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Learnings from a Monastery
Date: 2022-10-06 Thursday
Just getting back from a week at Abhayagiri Monastery, in the California hills north of the Bay Area.
For this sit I’m planning to offer some thoughts and perspectives on monastic life, on the fruit of dedicated practice, that hopefully you’ll find beneficial. Many things were uniquely impressive about these monks, and affirming of the transformational power and depth of our practice lineage.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Dharma, Monastics, and Happiness
Date: 2022-09-15 Thursday
For this we’ll be exploring a delightful list of positive attributes of monastics, at the time of the Buddha. There’s a lot to learn and absorb here, especially when we see how free and happy those monastics were.
The particular sutta MN 89, includes these lines:
"Here I see monastics living in concord,
with mutual appreciation,
without disputing,
blending like milk and water
viewing each other with kindly eyes.
"Here I see monastics smiling and cheerful,
sincerely joyful,
plainly delighting,
their faculties fresh,
living at ease,
unruffled,
subsisting on what others give,
abiding with mind [as aloof] as a wild deer’s."
After setting up the context of this sutta we’ll explore the above section line-by-line, with plenty of time for dialogue.
What’s engaging about this sutta is how it puts the fruit of the practice, how we can be in life itself, in human and tangible form.
In short, it’s about being happy.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind
Date: 2022-09-01 Thursday
For this sit, we’ll be considering a priceless teaching best known in Tibetan tradition, the “Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind.” This is a very precious teaching because it encourages us to not waste time…to use our extraordinary good fortune of life in a human body, to pursue the spiritual path as best we can.
While this is technically a Tibetan teaching, it’s also perfectly suited to encourage us on any aspect of the Buddhist path, including the Theravada.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Third and Fourth Noble Truths
Date: 2022-08-04 Thursday
The four noble truths are one of the first teachings of the Buddha and at the bedrock of Buddhist understanding in all traditions. This is a good time to open into these four: the unsatisfactory nature of un-awakened life, the reason why we’re not awake or free, the possibility of freedom, and how to become free.
Knowing these four deeply is important for long-term practitioners, to keep our sight focused on what’s at the root of this path. It’s often said if we truly realized these four, we’d be freed. The four also are very important for people newer to the path, to clearly see the way ahead.
Last week we explored the first two, and on Aug 4 we’ll review the first two briefly, for anyone who wasn’t there, and continue to the second two. In a sense these last two are the most uplifting of the four, because in them the Buddha shows us the possibility of awakening, or freedom from clinging, and then how to do it.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
First and Second Noble Truths
Date: 2022-07-21 Thursday
The four noble truths are one of the first teachings of the Buddha and at the bedrock of Buddhist understanding in all traditions. This is a good time to open into these four: the unsatisfactory nature of un-awakened life, the reason why we’re not awake or free, the possibility of freedom, and how to become free.
Knowing these four deeply is important for long-term practitioners, to keep our sight focused on what’s at the root of this path. It’s often said if we truly realized these four, we’d be freed. The four also are very important for people newer to the path, to clearly see the way ahead.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Finding Depth in the Three Jewels
Date: 2022-06-16 Thursday
For this talk we’ll be taking a deeper look at what’s called the “Three Jewels”: Buddha, dharma and sangha.
As many of you know, “taking refuge” in the three jewels is traditionally considered the doorway to entering the Buddhist path. While this might seem somewhat formalistic, actually there’s enormous depth there, in the way our inner connecting with these three can bring light, love and energy to our practice, even when things seem bleak. The three jewels are like a compass of the heart.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Untangling the Proliferation of Mind Called Papanca
Date: 2022-05-19 Thursday
This session we’ll be exploring papanca, a Pali word for mental proliferation. Whether you know it or not this is a subject you’re likely familiar with, because mental proliferation, the buzzing swarm of thoughts sometimes referred to as “monkey mind,” very often accompanies us in our meditation.
Pardon the mixture of metaphors, but both of these fit. By better understanding papanca we can learn what it means and doesn’t in terms of our mind activity. We also can learn when to apply antidotes and when to apply mindfulness, and in effect how to bring papanca onto the path.
This evening will complement the last session, when we explored purifying the mind.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
The Essential Importance of Purifying the Mind
Date: 2022-05-05 Thursday
For this next meeting of Eastside Insight we’ll be exploring purifying the mind, one way to understand the path and our walking on it.
In particular we’ll be looking at MN 7, the “Simile of the Cloth.” How we think, the attitudes we accept and cultivate, are at the root of our well-being, and at the root of how we find peace, happiness and clarity on the path.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
No Enemies
Date: 2022-04-21 Thursday
One of the greatest understandings of the Buddha, which he embodied in the midst of his own perilous times, is that there are no enemies. No matter what, he saw the potential in people for awakening, which as we saw during last session could include even hardened criminals.
Now, as we watch the war in the Ukraine, and face the possibility of worse to come, it’s important that we bring this teaching of “no enemies,” into our hearts.
We’ll consider these questions. This is a chance to look deeply into our own instincts to demonize, and how we can instead cultivate compassion, even for beings whose actions are damaging, in these most difficult of times.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Awakening Despite Baggage
Date: 2022-04-07 Thursday
For any of us who wonder if we’re too compromised to awaken, the history of the dharma is replete with beings who awakened despite heavy burdens.
Many over the centuries have been inspired by the story of Angulimala, likely history’s first serial killer, who became an awakened arahant.
Then in Tibetan tradition there’s Milarepa, who killed 35 relatives in a revenge murder, but continued on to become one of Tibet’s most revered masters.
The lives of both of these beings hold possibilities for us now, no matter our life conditions. We’ll explore these potentials together at Eastside Insight, and see what we can bring into our spiritual journeys.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Life of the Buddha Through Images
Date: 2022-03-17 Thursday
During his own lifetime the Buddha also encountered multiple challenges, from warring kingdoms to ill-intentioned relatives. And yet it was right in the middle of this that he shared his message of the path to freedom from suffering, across what is now northern India.
For this talk, we’ll be sharing the life of the Buddha in images. Some of these will be photos from my own travels, some from other sources. We’ll get a chance to better understand the Buddha’s life, how he coped with difficulties, and to place in your minds some of the sites so often referenced in the suttas.
Click here to view the talk on Vimeo.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Buddha’s First Sermon
Date: 2022-02-03 Thursday
Welcome to the possibilities of awakening and freedom as we move into 2022. Things may get wild, even uncomfortable, but with our practice we can bring some equanimity, some kindness, even to the most irascible moments.
For the first session of February we’ll be exploring the Buddha’s very first dharma talk, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, in which he set out the direction of all his future teachings.
We’ll explore the second of these talks during the second session.
These suttas are remarkable in their naked essence, in the way he so clearly stated his revolutionary awakening, and in the way this opened the mind-hearts of the people he’s speaking to.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Keeping Practice Alive in the Coming Year
Date: 2022-01-06 Thursday
For this session we’ll explore ways to keep our mindfulness practice alive, and growing, in the coming year. A strong practice takes tending, like a garden, if it is to bear fruit filled with vitality. Let’s explore tending a healthy practice together, and I’ll be offering some tips, ideas and angles, out of my own experience and the teachings of the Buddha and others.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
The Buddha’s Encounters with Mara
Date: 2021-12-16 Thursday
For this last gathering of the year we will explore a story of the Buddha’s time, a circumstance that brings alive who the Buddha was, and how as an awakened one he navigated the times of his lifetime. Those times were troubled in their own way, not so different from these times, making the light of the Buddha’s awakened mind stand out even more vividly.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Nibanna Metaphors
Date: 2021-09-02 Thursday
For this evening we’ll be considering some of the many metaphors the Buddha used to describe awakening, nibbana, the ultimate goal of our practice.
Sometimes the Buddha referred to nibbana as “the far shore,” “the taintless,” “cooling.”
These metaphors are helpful in cultivating a sense of direction, or where we’re heading, even when it’s not yet revealed. It’s a bit like setting a heading to cross the ocean, even when we don’t yet know what we’ll find there.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.