Video teachings with contemporary Buddhist teachers
The human body is fragile; in our lives, pain and illness are inevitable. This month, join mindfulness teacher Vidyamala Burch who has lived with severe chronic spinal pain for 40 years following injuries resulting in partial paraplegia in her teens. Drawing on central Buddhist texts, Vidyamala will uncover the key to the Buddha’s mental freedom and provide pointers for living with ease.
Though we may think of sitting still as a way to find peace, it’s not always what we find when we engage in formal sitting practice. In this series, Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist Michael Stone explores how to settle the mind and body when troubling afflictions visit us on the cushion.
The self has a lot of clout in contemporary culture. From self-help to selfies, it can be easy to forget that the self is a mutable condition: an unsteady and malleable phenomenon that arises from a set of causes. In this series with former Theravadin monk Christopher Titmuss, he unpacks the Buddhist doctrine of non-self to show how our tendency to attach to our ego’s patterns leads to problems.
Who among us has not felt the weight of loneliness? Out of thousands of skillful methods the Buddha taught, the brahmaviharas, or “sublime attitudes,” may be the most direct antidote to feelings of isolation and separation. In this series, Vinny Ferraro, an ex-convict and senior teacher at Against the Stream, will explore the first two of the brahmaviharas, lovingkindness and compassion, the cultivation of which increases our capacity to meet a range of conditions with a generous heart. In addition to providing tools to allay loneliness, Ferraro will pay special attention to the process of meeting our shortcomings with care.
How can we begin to unpack and unravel the workings of our own mind, so that we can find a reliable happiness that is not dependent on external conditions? Ven. Robina Courtin, a Tibetan Buddhist nun since the late 1970s, will use the Buddha’s unique psychological skills to help us loosen our instinctive clinging to a limited sense of self, which lies at the heart of our suffering.
In this series of talks, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Lama Rod Owens draws on the Buddhist teachings to help us enact an ethic of healing, especially as activists or allies of such movements as Black Lives Matter or gay marriage, so that we can live boldly instead of lashing out or shutting down.
It’s not uncommon to feel that we are a victim to our own minds. In this series of talks, Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche, a meditation master in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, teaches how to distinguish between the out-of-control ordinary mind and pristine mind, a deep inner refuge that can be entered by anyone, anytime.
The Buddha said that “all things exist on food.” We may pay attention to what we’re taking into our bodies physically—but do we pay attention to what we’re taking in mentally? Brother Phap Hai, a senior monastic disciple of Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, explores the Buddha’s teachings on the four nourishments of life: edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness.
Addiction, compulsion, dependence, obsession, craving, infatuation—whatever you want to call it, you know it when you’re in it. Thoughts can be addicting, just like eating, drinking, shopping, or gambling, a fact the Buddha understood well. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), people haven’t changed much in 2,000 years.
Meditation is sometimes described as the process of getting to know your own mind. But during this familiarization, how do you know whether you’re making progress? In this online retreat, Culadasa (John Yates, Ph.D.), a teacher with over four decades of experience in the Tibetan and Theravada Buddhist traditions, offers a set of instructions for honing the mind that has helped many dharma students cultivate their meditation practice.
Meditation Month teacher Spring Washam offers techniques to quiet the mind in today’s stressful world.
In this online retreat, Reverend Dosung Yoo, a minister in the Korean Won Buddhist tradition and a prominent translator of Korean Buddhist teachings, will lead you through a close reading of the Heart Sutra, providing a contemporary and practical guide to understanding this important text.
Author and meditation instructor Deborah David delivers practical advice for those seeking to develop a personal mindfulness practice. She will provide crucial tips for beginning and sustaining a practice in your own home and show you how to bring it out into the wider world.
Don’t worry about whether your practice is working, don’t judge your performance, don’t tell yourself stories or find other ways to avoid this very moment. These are just ways of separating from our deepest intention and our zazen. When you do zazen, just do zazen. That’s enough.
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