We started live-streaming our Wednesday evening sits in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Right now, most of the videos are on Facebook, but we will be migrating them to YouTube over the next while.
The talks from 2021 onward have been uploaded to SoundCloud. Find the audio from 2023 here:
https://soundcloud.com/saskatooninsight/sets/simc-wednesday-evening-2023
Find the audio from 2024 here:
https://soundcloud.com/saskatooninsight/sets/simc-wednesday-evening-2024
Select talks and retreats are also available on our Dharma Seed page:
https://simc.dharmaseed.org/
- January 2024
- January 31 – Anukampa – Compassion and Care – talk by Andrea – recording available upon request. The we did chant was a homage to Quan Yin. Words by Mary Thanissara, melody by Caroline Jones.
- January 24 – Find your true home on the Path – talk by Andrea – recording available upon request. The book referenced was A Whole-Life Path by Gregory Kramer.
- January 17 – The Fourth Noble Truth: Leading to gathered attention – talk by Andrea – recording available upon request.
- January 10 – The Fourth Noble Truth: Sila, or Ethical Action – The Eightfold Path is a beautiful invitation of a way to live our lives with integrity and peace as our guiding stars. Today Jeanne will share a STAR teaching that supports us to bring the path into our daily lives.
- January 3 – The Fourth Noble Truth: practices to support our capacity for freedom – In January we will explore the Fourth Noble Truth, which is a collection of practices that support the mind and heart in freedom. This collection is called the Noble Eightfold Path. We begin with Wise Intention, perfect for the New Year. Please join us in learning how wise intention is different from New Year’s resolutions!
- December 2023
- December 27 – The Wise Heart – This is our kindness week, and we will practice all four heart qualities as we wish everyone kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity for the season.
- December 20 – The Third Noble Truth: Equanimity – This week we explore the 4th aspect of the wise heart. This courageous, balanced quality deeply supports wisdom in the midst of things.
- December 13 – The Third Noble Truth: Joy – Our heart quality this week is joy! The third of four qualities of the wise heart, joy strengthens our capacity for compassion, and is itself a doorway to happiness.
- December 6 – The Third Noble Truth: Nibbana and Compassion – Each week throughout December we will practice a heart quality and explore it as a doorway to freedom in the heart and mind. These qualities of the wise heart can support us in all circumstances.
These teachings are offered in the spirit of generosity. If you are able to offer financial support to Jeanne or our guest teachers, please visit our dana page for details on sending an e-transfer, using PayPal, or making other arrangements.
https://saskatooninsight.com/wp/about/dana/
- November 2023
- November 29 – The Third Noble Truth: Nibbana and the heart practices – In our kindness practice night, Jeanne will offer practices of the heart which support the conditions for Nibbana. This will start a month of heart practices for liberation.
- November 22 – Living Fully, Living Freely: Embracing our Impermanence – This week Jeanne will offer teachings from the recent retreat with Nikki Mirghafori, with the theme of Living Fully, Living Freely: Embracing our Impermanence.
- November 15 – Why do you meditate? – Why is it that we practice meditation? This session starts with a special recording of the Satipatthana Sutta chanted in Pali (not included in this recording – see link instead). We then take a look at the varied ways that this sutta supports our wholehearted engagement with life, including the Buddha’s reason for practice: to cultivate the Highest Happiness.
- November 8 – The Third Noble Truth: Accessible Every Day – This talk offers the profound teaching of temporary Nibbana, from Ajahn Buddhadasa. It looks at how we can experience this peace in the midst of aversion, grasping, and delusion.
- November 1 – The Third Noble Truth: Peace in a Violent World – This session explores the profound wisdom of being able to be equanimous with discomfort, as a foundation for wise and strong effort in the world.
- October 2023
- October 25 – Metta and the Third Noble Truth (also on YouTube) – This week is the last Wednesday of the month, the week when we practice intentional kindness. We explore the connection between kindness and the third Noble Truth, which is the teaching that freedom in the heart and mind is possible.
- October 18 – The Noble Truths: Each Conditions the Next One – The third noble truth is the possibility of contentment, as we release craving, or contention with the way things are. Then, we can act to support peace from a place of peace.
- October 11 – The First Noble Truth with CARE – How do we let go, without letting go? We dive deeper into this central liberation teaching of Four Noble Truths this week.
- October 4 – The First Noble Truth, Internally – Last week we explored the Four Noble Truths as an engaged practice in the world. This week we look at how we use it internally, to support our own hearts and minds in ease and peace. Especially, we will look at how to work with craving/resistance – do we resist it? Do we struggle to let it go? Is there another way that goes with the flow, but is not a giving up?
- September 2023
- September 27 – Awareness and the Wholesome Qualities – On the last Wednesday of each month, we practice intentional kindness practices – for ourselves, and all beings. This week, we explore the teaching of the Four Noble Truths as a kindness practice. The Four Noble Truths can be understood as the core liberation teaching of the Buddha, and kindness can be found at the very heart of this practice.
- September 20 – Aware of Awareness Review + Four Noble Truths – “Aware of awareness” is a bit of a tongue twister. We recap this liberating practice again this week. We also turn to the last teaching in the Satipatthana Sutta, which describes the heart of the Buddha’s message of peace.
- September 13 – Aware of Awareness: Five simple practices – The practice of being aware of awareness is a bit of a tongue twister and can be confusing. This week we take another look at this theme, which our special guests Devon and Nico explored two weeks ago. Spoiler alert: are you aware right now?
- September 6 – The Satipatthana Sutta refrain: a refuge and support for engagement in the world – The smoke that we are experiencing in Canada is connecting us to beings around the planet who are all affected by climate disruption. How does the Satipatthana refrain help us practice peace and wise action in the midst of this?
- August 2023
- August 30 – The Magic of Awareness: Mindfulness of Consciousness – with guest teachers devon and nico hase
- August 23 – An overview of the Satipatthana Sutta – We have been studying this profound teaching over the last year, covering 14 distinct liberation teachings and how to bring these into our everyday life. This week we will review, and set the stage for the last teaching in this series.
- August 16 – What did Nature Teach the Buddha? – What did nature teach the Buddha? Jeanne is back from kayaking and explores this as we wrap up the teaching to Bahiya of the Bark Cloth.
- August 9 – Why Study and Practice? – talk by Andrea – audio recording available upon request. (Note – due to a bad network connection at the time of recording, the audio has many lags, but it is mostly understandable.)
- August 2 – The Six Sense Bases: The Shortest Teaching on Awakening – James Lowe joins Jeanne to explore the Buddha’s shortest discourse on Awakening! Both Venerable Malunkyaputta and the revered Bahiya of the Bark Cloth ask for and receive a nutshell teaching of liberation. We explore this teaching on the six sense bases, which can be an everyday practice supporting freedom in the mind and heart.
- July 2023
- July 26 – Metta, Spaciousness, and Not-self – talk by Andrea – audio recording available upon request.
- July 19 – Not Self, Internally and Externally – This week we wrap up our exploration of the teachings of not-self with 5 invitations to liberation. These are practices we can bring into our daily life to support our ease and freedom.
- July 12 – Give Your Self Back to Nature – No self, non self, not self? If there is no self, who is sitting here? And why is this liberating? We will continue to unravel these questions this week.
- July 5 – An Introduction to the Five Aggregates – This talk gives a brief recap of the Satipatthana Sutta and contexts the five aggregates as part of the fourth foundation of mindfulness. We can see ‘selfing’ as normal, and not an enemy to be gotten rid of, but rather related to with wisdom. It also explores skills of a healthy sense of self that are important for the investigation of the not-self teaching.
- June 2023
- June 28 – Equanimity: The 7th Factor of Awakening – This talk explores the final factor of enlightenment as an invitation to balance in the midst of things and as practice of non-clinging and awakening.
- June 21 – Choiceless Attention and Kinds of Knowing – talk by Andrea – audio recording available upon request.
- June 14 – Samadhi: food for the heart – talk by Andrea – audio recording available upon request.
- June 7 – Joy: the Fourth Factor of Awakening – The Buddhist teachings are full of joy, and this week we will learn about three sources of joy that are accessible in our lives. As part of this, we celebrate the joy of Pride month!
- May 2023
- May 31 – Metta as a support for Energy: the 3rd Factor of Awakening – Metta, or kindness, can support us in finding the easeful energy that can be both energizing and calming. This session begins with a guided meditation in kindness which taps into easeful, gentle energy. At the end of the talk, we explore how we can sense this energy during our meditation and also in activities which energize us. This energy, and the other factors, are considered treasures in the heart.
- May 24 – Clinging and Non clinging with guest teacher Walt Opie – Walt begins this talk with his experience of the Golden Buddha, and goes on to explore non-clinging as a way of unveiling our own inner treasure. He offers concrete examples of impermanence in daily life which support letting go.
- May 17 – Finding moments of ease in the midst of it all, with guest teacher Jill Shepherd – In this meditation and talk, Jill begins with a clear and concise description of the four noble truths and explores inner ease as one way of connecting with and understanding this core teaching. She offers accessible practices for cultivating it.
- (No recording for May 10)
- May 3 – Investigating Investigation – Friends, this week we dive more deeply into the map of liberation that is called the 7 Factors of Awakening. These factors can be called up individually, or, in groups, or, work together as a natural process that slides toward awakening the way streams and rivers slope and slide to the ocean… or, in our Saskatchewan experience, the way otters can slope and slide to the lake.
- April 2023
- April 26 – The Seven Factors of Awakening – This week we begin our exploration of the Seven Factors of Awakening – this natural process of mind and heart that we can learn to support and work with intentionally. A beautiful description of this process is found in the teachings: that cultivating these seven ordinary qualities of mind inclines the mind toward awakening just as the streams and rivers lead to the ocean.
- April 19 – Is there a hindrance now? – The Satipatthana Sutta encourages not only to notice when hindrances are present, but also to notice when they are absent. We might notice there are more times when they are absent than we think!
- April 12 – Befriending Doubt – This week we come to the last of the challenging states of mind, and the most difficult: Doubt. However, doubt can be both a hindrance and a support for our minds and hearts. This week we will explore both of these aspects of this state of mind.
- April 5 – Meeting Restlessness – One of the misunderstandings that we often have is that a good meditator is able to stop thinking. In reality, our thoughts are often restless – this restlessness is the 4th challenging state that the Buddha also experienced. This week, we explore how to make peace with this state – and we don’t have to stop thinking in order to do it!
- March 2023
- March 29 – Friendliness toward Sloth and Torpor – Sloth and torpor: two more of the top seven difficult states that the Buddha named in his own experience. Yes, they are exactly as they sound! The mind and body when they have little energy and can feel like we are trying to move through wet cement. Do we try to push our way through? Or is there another way? We explore this this week.
(P.S. We will also honour our friend, the sloth!)
- March 22 – Aversion part 3: SIMC Similes – Got aversion? Tune in for our wrap up session on working with the mind when it wants to be anywhere but here!
- March 15 – Aversion: The Cling Wrap Practice – How to practice peace when we really don’t like what’s going on? This is what we explore this week in our mindfulness practice.
- March 8 – Liberation: the Doorway of Aversion – We all have difficult thoughts and emotions in our lives. Meditation can’t stop the painful aspects of life, but it can offer wise ways of surfing with the waves of challenge. We explore this way of peace this week.
- March 1 – Liberation: Watching the Wanting mind – The first skillful way of working with the wanting mind – and all of the challenging states – is to switch our attention from what is wanted, to the wanting itself. This talk explores the liberation of wise mindfulness of wanting.
- March 29 – Friendliness toward Sloth and Torpor – Sloth and torpor: two more of the top seven difficult states that the Buddha named in his own experience. Yes, they are exactly as they sound! The mind and body when they have little energy and can feel like we are trying to move through wet cement. Do we try to push our way through? Or is there another way? We explore this this week.
- February 2023
- February 22 – Processes of Liberation: The Fourth Foundation – The Buddhist teachings acknowledge that working with thoughts can be difficult. To assist with this, we will explore some strategies that befriend thoughts, rather than make them an enemy. We talk about these helpful ways to work with difficult mind states this week.
- February 15 – Befriending the mind – Do you have the understanding that meditation means you have to stop thinking? The Buddhist way of relating to thoughts and to the mind is a radically different approach of befriending, rather than seeing thoughts as the enemy. Jeanne explores this through practice and teaching.
- February 8 – Vedana: Reliable Feeling Tones – In exploring pleasant experiences, the Buddha found that some are more reliable than others. We take a look at these more dependable happiness and joys this week.
- February 1 – Vedana: The teaching of the Second Dart – The Buddha gave us a key teaching about how to have a skillful relationship with vedana, which describes how to meet the feeling tones with wisdom. This teaching on the second dart is a training in how to meet pleasant, unpleasant, and more neutral experiences, as invitations to be intimate with our lives, and as doorways to release from reactivity.
- January 2023
- January 25 – Vedana: Making peace with the Unpleasant – This week we explore the paradox of making peace with unpleasant experiences. How is this possible, what does this really mean, and why would we want to do this?
- January 18 – Introducing Vedana (Feeling Tones) – As our embodied mindfulness develops, we can become aware of the push and pull of experience – pleasant and unpleasant ones. Without mindfulness, these can drive us to greed, ill-will, or delusion. Recognizing vedana, these feeling tones, we can learn to respond in ways to foster more peace and calm.
- January 11 – Mindfulness of death: living fully here and now – This week, we return to our Satipatthana Study – this foundational and liberating teaching. We have been immersing ourselves in the foundation of the body – first, as an embodied place of refuge, balance, and presence. Then, as a source of freedom through the elements and anatomy practices, which cultivate an embodied understanding that we are not separate, but part of the flow of all things. Now, we turn to the last body practice, gently considering the mortality of the body, which can motivate us to live fully, here and now. Please join us for this profound contemplation this week! Special guest Rachel Lewis, dharma teacher and music arranger, joins us this week to offer a live chant.
- January 4 –Energizing Intention through the Wholesome – This week we celebrate the beginning of the (Gregorian) New Year with some of our favourite things – leaning our hearts and mind into the Wise Effort of cultivating the wholesome aspects of our practice.
The talks from 2021 onward have been uploaded to SoundCloud.
https://soundcloud.com/saskatooninsight/
- December 2022
- December 28 – Wise Intention – The Buddhist understanding of Wise intention is very different from what we think of as New Year’s resolutions! This week Jeanne shared the inspiring differences, and we wrote our own collective Wise Intention poem!
- December 21 – Winter solstice as a time for resting deeply – This Solstice week, Jeanne and Andrea offer reflections including poetry, chanting, and seasonal inspiration.
- December 14 – Meeting holiday stress with mindfulness and kindness – The holiday season can be stressful and difficult for many people. This week, we share how our practice, and especially mindfulness of the body, can support us. It is possible to cultivate peace and joy in our hearts in a daily, reliable way, in this time.
- December 7 – The Body, Intention, and Insight – Simple mindfulness of the body profoundly supports stability and serenity. This week Jeanne is back after a week on retreat, and she explores how these body practices can lead to deep insight in mind and heart.
- November 2022
- November 30 – no recording available – you can find the Resting Deeply chant here: https://youtu.be/KYZ0-CcHc6s
- November 23 – Being Nature – Our next practice in the Satipatthana Sutta is the contemplation in the body of the elements of earth, water, fire, and air. This profound practice invites us into a natural freedom as a part of, not separate from, nature.
- November 16 – Body contemplation: letting go of conditioning – This week the Satipatthana Sutta exploration offers a way to let go of the limiting conditioning that we received about our bodies. We have all received messages about how the body “should” be – regarding the size, colour, shape, gender, sexual orientation, kind of ability, age, standard of beauty, and other limiting standards – that can be harmful and sometimes traumatic. This week the Buddha invites us into a practice to acknowledge the reality of this harm, and offers a way to let go of this conditioning, pointing to an inner freedom not dependent on the physical body.
- November 9 – There is a body… in motion – This week the rubber hits the road as we take the Satipatthana on a road trip… tune in to see where we go.
- November 2 – Fostering peace, inside and out – Jeanne and James led a retreat on Fostering Peace, Inside and Out. In this session, James joins Jeanne, and they highlight some of the teachings from the weekend.
- October 2022
- October 26 – Renunciation as an offering of kindness – The last Wednesday of each month we offer a heart practice – this week we will explore kindness and how it connects with the wisdom training from the Satipatthana Sutta, the foundational teaching which we are diving into this fall.
- October 19 – There is a body – Hi friends, the teaching on wisdom is repeated 13 times in the Satipatthana Sutta! This week, we explore part 3 of this wisdom refrain.
- October 12 – Beginnings and Endings – Last week we began training in wisdom through the Satipatthana Sutta. This training invited us to look at our lives as a web of interconnected relationships and some ways that this understanding can support our daily lives. The round dance that we participated in for the national Day of Truth and Reconciliation was a beautiful teaching about our interconnection (see link). This week we continue this exploration.
- October 5 – Internal and external mindfulness – Our Satipatthana Sutta study started with the training of tranquility, and built on that with a training in joy. This week we continue our gradual deepening with a training in wisdom. These are all practices which build on each other, and can support peace in our daily lives.
- September 2022
- September 28 – Settle in the here and now – This week we continue our exploration of body and breath as the First Foundation of Mindfulness, guided again by this excerpt from Danna Faulds’s poem, “Just This Breath”: “Settle in the here and now. / Reach down into the center / where the world is not spinning / and drink this holy peace.”
- September 21 – A Training in Tranquility – The Satipatthana Sutta is a vast map of how we can work skillfully with our experience. We begin this week with the first foundation of the body – how can it support us in happiness in this present moment?
- September 14 – Intro to the Foundations of Mindfulness – We will start our fall with a dive into the foundational teaching of the Satipatthana Sutta – The Foundations of Mindfulness. This inspirational teaching is the bedrock for our whole practice.
- September 7 – The Power of Blessing – At the beginning of our fall season, this week we reflect on the power of blessing – what blessing is, and how blessing with our kind attention can powerfully support ourselves and others.
- August 2022
- August 17, 24, 31 – no recording available
- August 10 – Reflections from Anglin Lake – Jeanne and some sangha members returned from the retreats at Anglin Lake. Jeanne shares some reflections from retreat.
- August 3 – Practicing with open attention and the Bahiya Sutta – This week we explore one of the Buddha’s shortest nature teachings, given to a dedicated practitioner, Bahiya. This teaching will bring us back full circle to the beginning of our touching the earth teachings.
- July 2022
- July 27 – The Nature of Metta – The last Wednesday of the month, we practice intentional kindness, or metta, in Pali, an ancient language from around the time of the Buddha. This week we explore more connections between metta and nature practice, in our Touching the Earth series. Counselor and meditation teacher James Lowe will join Jeanne this week.
- July 20 – Touching the Earth: Four Wise Efforts – This week we explore four practices/paddle strokes/ways to CALL on the practice to influence conditions toward peace: Cultivate, Abide, Limit, and Let Go (CALL).
- July 13 – The Four Elements: Conditionality and Wholesomeness – This week we continue our touching the earth teachings by exploring the 4 elements, a practice included in the foundational teachings. We explore the 4 elements practice as a doorway to understanding the teaching of not self, and also as a way to cultivate wholesome qualities in our every day life.
- July 6 – The guiding STAR of our practice – This last month we have been exploring the Touching the Earth Story – how to touch the earth in our everyday lives, with our minds and hearts. This week we feel into what the Buddha pointed to as the liberating aspect of this teaching, which we can carry in our heart wherever we are, with the acronym STAR.
- June 2022
- June 29 – A reciprocal relationship with nature – This week, we touch the earth with our hearts, during metta night. We will explore how reciprocal relationship with nature can lead to insight and awakening.
- June 22 – Touching the earth everyday – We will continue with our Touching the Earth teachings this week. Jeanne shares the story of the Buddha touching the earth, the gifts of this practice, and ways we can touch the earth in our everyday lives.
- June 15 – Our inner nature is nature: Indigenous and Buddhist wisdom – This June, Jeanne shares a series of nature teachings. You are invited to touch the earth with us this month, with our first week celebrating National Indigenous Day, June 21.
- June 8 – Celebrating the Parami, with Pride – This week we celebrate the beautiful qualities of the paramis, illustrated through voices from the 2SLGBTQ+ community, in honour of Saskatoon’s Pride Week, June 11-18.
- June 1 – Roadmap of the heart – We spend one more week with the heart practices, taking a closer look at the “road map of the heart” that Jeanne introduced last week. This map can support us in finding our way in the twists and turns of everyday life.
- May 2022
- May 25 – The Divine Abodes: supporting the wise heart – This week we wrap up our mini series on the heart qualities, or Divine Abodes of kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity by looking at how they support each other and support the wise heart in responding to all aspects of life.
- May 18 – Compassion: nourishing the heart – This week we explore compassion as a nourishing and accessible heart quality. Together with kindness, equanimity, and joy, these qualities are understood as an inner home and refuge.
- May 11 – Joy and the resilient heart – This week we celebrate the qualities of the resilient heart, with an emphasis on joy.
- May 4 – Our friends, the parami– We spend one more week understanding how the paramis show up in groups to support our daily practice. We need never feel alone, with our friends the parami.
- April 2022
- April 27 – Viriya: Courageous Energy – This week we explored the teachings from our recent Saturday mini retreat, Viriya: Courageous Energy. We explored how to recognize and cultivate this important quality which energizes and nourishes the heart in meeting the challenges of the world.
- April 20 – The Parami: Giving Us Purpose and Meaning in Our Everyday Life – We have been practicing the ten paramis, or qualities of heart and mind that support peace. This week we will explore how, together, they can create a life of integrity, conviction, and purpose.
- April 13 – The Gifts of Equanimity – This week, we completed our exploration of the paramis, with a look at ways to cultivate the 10th quality of equanimity, and its gifts of balance, wisdom, and freedom in the heart and mind.
- (No recording for April 6)
- March 2022
- March 30 – Liberating Invitation of Equanimity – Equanimity is seen as the crown of our practice: it is the final parami, as well as the final quality in many other central lists in the Buddhist teaching. We will explore this quality and its liberating invitation this week.
- March 23 – Living in the Stream of Kindness – Kindness, the 9th Parami, is a quality we practice monthly in our community, and call upon frequently. This week, we will celebrate kindness and get creative about how to practice it, so that we can live more and more fully in the stream of kindness.
- March 16 – Parami of Resolve – Resolve, the 8th parami, is the moment to moment willingness to return to our wholesome intentions. Like the migrating geese, this consistent course correction supports the journey. This week is an invitation to explore resolve together.
- March 9 – Parami of Truthfulness – This week we explored what the three Insights of Insight Meditation are, and how they support the liberating parami of truthfulness, in aligning our hearts with seeing clearly the big picture of how things are.
- March 2 – Meeting what is happening – How do we meet what is happening in the world? Jeanne shared some ways that the practice can support wise internal and external action.
- February 2022
- February 23 – Three Truths – This week we explored the 7th parami of truthfulness with three truths, or understandings, that can bring peace to our hearts and minds.
- February 16 – Gratitude and Generosity as Expressions of Truthfulness – Last weekend SIMC hosted a beautiful online retreat called Gratitude and Generosity: Realizing the Abundant Heart. This week we shared some insights from the retreat and explored how these two qualities are connected to the parami of truthfulness.
- February 9 – Peace of Truthfulness – The 10 Paramis are powers that we can lean into and trust. This week we considered the seventh parami of truthfulness and how this quality can support peace in the heart and mind.
- February 2 – Oh Snail! The Parami of Patience – This week we explored the 6th parami, the beautiful quality of patience, and the ways that patience can be a doorway to freedom. This week we honour our relative the snail and their wisdom!
- January 2022
- January 26 – Commemorating Thich Nhat Hanh – This week we remember beloved Elder Thich Nhat Hanh and his teachings.
- January 19 – Ease of energy – This week we explored the 5th parami of energy – tuning into energy as a sustaining force, and turning it toward wise effort.
- (No recording for January 12)
- January 5 – Wisdom as a support – This week we continue with Wisdom, the 4th of the 10 Parami, or qualities of heart and mind that support the highest happiness. We explored what wisdom is, and how can it be an accessible, daily support for peace in every day life.
The talks from 2021 onward have been uploaded to SoundCloud. Find the audio from 2021 here:
https://soundcloud.com/saskatooninsight/sets/simc-wednesday-evening-practice-2021
- December 2021
- December 29 – Returning Home to Intention – The Buddhist sense of intentions can be a nourishing home fire to return to in this very moment – rather than a high expectation bar that we have trouble reaching. This week we celebrate intention with a talk and also with a community reading of Dharma Dreams, the collective aspiration poem that we wrote together last spring.
- December 22 – A season of stillness and reflection – Jeanne and the Wednesday night leaders offered reflections on solstice and on the season.
- December 15 – Wisdom and Compassion Across Traditions – Friends, I once sat a retreat at Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery, Plum Village, and in the dining room was a painting of the Buddha and Jesus, together. I’ve carried that sense of connection in my heart ever since. This week, I offer reflections on the connections between both of these contemplative traditions.
- December 8 – The Parami of Renunciation – This week’s exploration of the Parami looks at the gifts of renunciation.
- December 1 – The Parami of Sila – Good Relations – This week we continue our exploration of the Parami – ten qualities that can support the mind and heart to cross the floods of challenges that can sweep us away. We turn to the practice of sila, which Jeanne likes to translate as good relations, and ways that we can reflect on our skillfulness as a support for joy.
- November 2021
- November 24 – Breathing with calm and joy in the midst of life’s challenges – Jeanne spent 10 days online with the calm and joy that can accompany breathing! The retreat was based in an important teaching from the Ānāpānasati Sutta, and Jeanne shares some aspects of this teaching this week.
- (no recording for November 17)
- November 10 – A Way of Living in Kindness – the Parami of Generosity – The parami are ten qualities of heart and mind that carry us in challenging times. This week we explored the parami of dana (generosity), and the way our individual acts of generosity become a way of living in kindness.
- November 3 – Crossing the Floods – an intro to the Parami – The Parami are ten qualities of the heart of the bodhisattva – those who wish to cultivate peace in the world, for all beings. Tonight, we started with setting the foundation of our discussion on the parami, by first talking about the floods that can sweep us along – a tide of worries, duties and pressures – which the parami can help us navigate.
- October 2021
- October 27 – Metta and compassion in the world – Metta and compassion often go hand in hand. This week we explored how we can bring these qualities into today’s world, and how they can free our hearts.
- October 20 – The Spiritual Faculties to Guide our Canoe – We wrap up our exploration of the 5 Spiritual Faculties, these beautiful, accessible, supportive qualities, which guide us in connecting with the current of every day wisdom.
- October 13 – A Taste of Peace – We continued to explore the aspect of wisdom in the 5 spiritual faculties and how we can balance these faculties in our practice.
- October 6 – The Many Arms of Kwan Yin – We continued to explore the aspect of wisdom in the 5 spiritual faculties and how we can balance these faculties in our practice.
- September 2021
- September 29 – Wisdom of the Heart – Our hearts are flexible, ever-renewing, and wise. This week we explored the 5th spiritual faculty though the wisdom of the heart. Jeanne led a special heart practice of letting go.
- September 22 – Kinds of Wisdom in Everyday Life – What is wisdom, in the Buddhist understanding? And how does it help our every day life? We explore this 5th spiritual faculty this week.
- (No recording for September 15)
- September 8 – Creating the conditions for samadhi – This week we explored the conditions that we can set in place to support the cultivation of the 4th spiritual faculty of samadhi – calming, steadying, and gathering the mind and heart.
- September 1 – Cultivating steadiness in daily life – The 4th spiritual faculty of samadhi is translated as a gathering of attention, steadying of mind, or concentration. This week we will explore what samadhi is and how to cultivate it, even in daily life.
- August 2021
- August 25 – The Partnership of Mindfulness and Kindness – We turn the 3rd spiritual power of mindfulness toward kindness. This move can nurture wholesome states and soften our experience of challenging times.
- August 18 – Dealing Mindfully with Difficult Thoughts – Our exploration of the 3rd Spiritual Power of Mindfulness continues with the Buddha’s five suggestions for dealing mindfully with difficult thoughts.
- (No recording for August 11)
- August 4 – Make Friends with our Thinking – We continued to explore the 3rd Spiritual Power of Mindfulness, in relation to thinking. How can we make friends with our thinking, rather than seeing it as an enemy, or a problem?
- July 2021
- July 28 – Mindfulness of Mind States – This week we will bring wise relationship to thoughts so that we can practice being aware of them, and not lost in them. This can bring tremendous freedom to the mind and heart.
- July 21 – The Miracle of Mindfulness – Ironically, we can at times, take the third spiritual faculty of mindfulness for granted. This week we explored a particular mindfulness practice called open awareness, and its gift of connecting us with the world.
- (No recording for July 14)
- July 7 – The Art of Letting Go – This week, Jeanne wrapped up our exploration of letting go as we explored the eight fold path as a guide to the wise effort of abandoning unwholesome states.
- June 2021
- June 30 – Equanimity: Support in Letting Go – This week for our heart practice, Jeanne, with special guest James Lowe, explored Equanimity, the 4th of the Divine Abidings, and the ways it can help us meet the CALL of our practice (Cultivate and Abide in the wholesome; Limit and Let go of the unwholesome).
- June 23 – The Highest Happiness – This week, Jeanne will brought in teachings from a retreat she co-taught last week on the Highest Happiness. The Buddha’s first teaching introduced a path to peace by letting go of craving. Letting go is also part of our CALL to right effort.
- (No recording for June 16)
- June 9 – The CALL of Right Effort – Letting go – This week Jeanne returned to our exploration of the 5 Spiritual Powers, and the CALL of the second power of Wise Effort: cultivating and abiding in wholesome states, and limiting and letting go of unwholesome ones. What does the last “L” of letting go mean? And how can we practice it?
- (No recording for June 2)
- May 2021
- (No recording for May 26)
- May 19 – Concentration and Insight answering the CALL of Right Effort – Jeanne brought learning from our recent concentration retreat into the frame of the C.A.L.L. of the wise efforts of practice. What is concentration – samadhi, in Pali – and how does it support us to enter the stream of the practice?
- May 12 – Our collective aspiration in celebrating Jeanne’s graduation – Jeanne feels that the whole sangha has been involved in supporting her teacher training and graduation. Tonight we celebrated this milestone, and Jeanne read the sangha aspiration poem that we wrote together last week! Jeanne also played a lovely Kuan Yin chant from her cohort to start the sit.
- May 5 – Wise Effort of Letting Go – This week we continued with the C.A.L.L. of wise effort by looking at how we Let Go. And at the end of our evening, we co-wrote a poem together for Jeanne to read at her teacher training graduation, on Friday, May 7, 2021.
- April 2021
- April 28 – Metta in our every day lives and Living the Dharma Program – Metta (lovingkindness) supports our CALL of Right Effort, Cultivate and Abide in the wholesome, and in doing so, we Limit the opportunities for unwholesome states of mind to take root. The Living the Dharma Program finished in Feb. Sharing from the participants is not included in the recording, but we do have their offering to our sangha in the form of a lovingkindness song.
- April 21 – Dhamma Friends with Devon Hase – The theme for the evening: “The Live Wire of Authenticity” – Devon shared some of her experiences practicing in Asia and jumps forward to the fifth faculty – wisdom – and how our practice can support developing wisdom. Jeanne and Devon finish the session playing a recording of an impermanence chant they participated in during one of their training programs.
- April 14 – Avoiding the rapids with Wise Effort – This week we explored the 3rd Wise Effort: limiting unwholesome states. How do we avoid or prevent hitting the rapids, as we navigate the river of our experience?
- April 7 – Our year as “zangha” – We reflected on our one year of zoom sangha (“zangha”) gatherings. Sangha itself is a way of nourishing the second spiritual power of energy/viriya. We considered together how the last year has nourished and sustained our practise, and what we have missed.
- Also a fun little video montage of the teachers who have visited us this year
- March 2021
- March 31 – Energy and Kindness – We explored kindness (metta) as a support for staying in the stream of nourishing energy.
- March 24 – The C.A.L.L. of Wise Effort – We continued to explore the C.A.L.L. of Wise Effort, incorporating the teachings from our weekend retreat with Pascal Auclair. (Note – some on-screen sharing by participants was not included in this video.)March 17 – The C.A.L.L. of Viriya – We continued to investigate the C.A.L.L. of Viriya… the wise aspects of connecting, abiding, limiting and letting go. Thanks to Laura, Ted, and Andrea for sharing some of their insights too.
- March 10 – Viriya: Wise Effort – The five Spiritual Powers are sometimes referred to as a river, whose current leads toward freedom. How do we work wisely with energy to balance our canoe in the current, given the rapids, boulders, and other conditions in this river?
- March 3 – Dhamma Friends with Elvina Charley – Our dear friend Elvina Charley joined us to share her teachings on the Beauty Way, or Hoźho. Both Jeanne and Elvina led periods of meditation. Elvina had a brief internet outage but was able to return to close our practice with her song.
- February 2021
- February 24 – Energy – a Nourishing, Sustaining, and Discerning Power – We continued to explore the Spiritual Power of Energy, including the energy of the group to support our practise.
- February 17 – meditation and dharma talk – We continued to look at the spiritual power of energy. Last week we explored the nurturing potential of easeful energy; this week we looked at how to channel it towards peace.
- February 10 – meditation and dharma talk – The spiritual faculties become powers as we turn them intentionally toward supporting peace in our hearts and minds. This week we will explore the second power, Viriya, often translated as energy, with its flavour of nourishing, sustaining, easeful effort.
- February 3 – meditation and dharma talk – The Spiritual Faculties become Spiritual Powers as we bring them in intentionally to our lives. This week we will continue looking at confidence, which can cultivate a sense of rootedness and steadiness.
- January 2021
- January 27 – meditation and dharmette – guest teacher bruni dávila leads a metta practice and discusses how metta integrates with the whole path of practice.
- January 20 – meditation and dharma discussion – Dhamma Friends with Tara Mulay – Jeanne and Tara explore their mutual delight at the mystery of our practice — how this concise and precise set of instructions opens up into an intuitive way of knowing that surprises and nourishes our hearts and minds.
- January 13 – meditation and dharma talk – What brought you to the practice? What helps you keep practicing? Jeanne delves into saddha, translated as faith or confidence, one of the five spiritual faculties we are investigating.
- January 6 – meditation and dharma talk – To begin our New Year, we started an exploration of the 5 Spiritual Faculties and how they support our practice: confidence, energy, mindfulness, collectedness, and wisdom. These 5 faculties become spiritual powers as we cultivate them.
- December 2020
- December 30 – Jeanne had finished teaching an online retreat with IMS on Viriya: Gentle Perseverance and Resilience. She shared highlights from the retreat.
- December 23 – A special Seasonal Community Offering… Jeanne, Bob, and Andrea collaborate to offer their reflections on the essence of the season and how it connects to our practice.
- December 16 – We are in the midst of seasonal traditions, including solstice and Christmas… how do these connect with the Buddhist tradition, and support our resilience at this time? Jeanne offers a personal perspective on the connections and nourishment of this time of year.
- December 9 – exploring the topic of our recent daylong retreat, Resilience in the time of COVID. Jeanne will offer reflections on resilience (reflections from others not included in the recording)
- December 2 – with our special Dhamma Friend Elvina Charley!
- November 2020
- November 25 – On this metta night, we explored The Dharma of Belonging: the ways our practice can meet this great human need for connection and relation-ship.
- November 18 – Processes of Liberation: concluding our tour through the Foundations of Mindfulness, summarizing this step by step process of mindfulness of body, mind, and wisdom, that we can walk together, as a community.
- November 11 – Remembrance of Peace – the many ways that the practice cultivates a peace in our hearts that we can offer the world
- November 4 – exploring the last three calming qualities of the 7 Awakening Factors, as a balance to the previous three energizing factors. All of these factors are friends we can call on, to balance our heart and mind. This week: do we call by text, phone, fax, or zoom? We will explore various ways of calling on these friends.
- October 2020
- October 28 – Jeanne shares some teachings from the online retreat we hosted last weekend with Jeanne, Bonnie Duran, and Elvina Charley teaching.
- October 21 – continuing to explore the ‘discerning sword of wisdom’ this week, by investigating our own experience of energy and joy, the 3rd and 4th factors of awakening that are present in each of our minds and hearts.
- October 14 – inquiry, the next factor of awakening; exploring this quality as a key to wisdom and energy.
- October 7 – discussion on equanimity and mindfulness, two of the factors of awakening, which encourage active engagement with the process of liberation of the heart and mind.
- September 2020
- September 30 – Equanimity, the last of the 7 Factors of Awakening, and the last of the Divine Abodes of the Heart.
- September 23 – ways we can cultivate the seven factors of awakening at any time, and as support to our practice.
- September 16 – exploring the theme of liberation as a daily practice.
- September 9 – dharma talk with guest teacher Adrianne Ross: paramis as qualities we can develop in daily life
- September 2 – with guest teacher Susie Harrington: introducing the next topic we will be exploring over the next little while, the Seven Factors of Awakening. Susie provided a little more detail about interest and intimacy (dhammavicaya, often translated as “investigation”)
- August 2020
- August 26 – we explore the difficult states of mind referred to as the hindrances as processes of liberation for the mind and heart from a heart perspective, on our metta night.
- August 19 – getting to know the challenging states of mind as a pathway to being more free, in the midst of things. We will look more closely at the hindrances, or challenging states of mind, at more ways to work with their energies
- August 12 – sharing some of the wisdom we learned from Nature during the recent retreats at Anglin Lake
- August 5 – 4 essential items the Buddha recommended we P.A.C.K. for our inner journey.
- July 2020
- July 29 – reflecting on the importance of sangha friends on the path – friends both inner and outer, who support our heart.
- July 22 – summarizing our exploration of wisdom and tie it back into a bird’s eye view of the 8 fold path of peace.
- July 15 – bringing in the quality of lightness and experimentation to our our cultivation of wisdom – what are you cooking in your wisdom laboratory?
- July 8 – how we can live fully and wholeheartedly, with wholesome desire, without attachment.
- July 1 – connecting the dots of the wisdom practices we have been exploring to understand how to set the conditions for this innate and natural process.
- June 2020
- June 24 – “dhamma friends” with special guests Rachel Lewis and Devin Berry
- June 17 – the role of reliable kinds of joy that are accessible in every moment as part of the liberation process
- June 10 – the important and essential role of quiet joy in the cultivation of liberating insight
- June 3: bringing clear seeing to world events
- May 2020
- May 27: how the four Divine Abodes of kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity collaborate in our daily lives, with a special look at the role of joy in nourishing the other three
- May 20 with special guest appearance by Rachel Lewis: clear seeing as a way of seeing meditation as a fascinating deep sea dive… what beauty can we discover?
- May 13: exploring what clear seeing means, and how it leads to wisdom and peace
- May 6: Wise View – reflecting on our experience and learning from it; exploring reflections and learnings from this time of COVID that we wish to carry as touchstones in our lives
- April 2020
- April 29: Caring Connection – exploring simple caring as a key element of practice
- April 22: celebrating Earth Day and the teachings of Nature
- April 15: the power of gratitude to uplift, support, and sustain the heart
- April 8: with Ayya Anandabodhi readings and teachings from some of the beautiful poems from Matty Weingast’s new book, The First Free Women
- April 1 –