This retreat dharma talk focuses on how to cultivate the path of emptiness and compassion and why they're important together.

Awakening Together Through The Union Of Emptiness And Compassion

The Tibetans have a name for our human response to craving, Shenpa or "the hook." When stimulus leads to craving and we reach out to fulfill the desire. Often we're bling to this process and get stuck in trying to fulfill the craving in unhelpful ways. This talk explores this process and how to unhook.

How to Not Scratch the Itch of Craving

Vedana of Feeling Tones, is the Second Foundation of Mindfulness. Its a powerful practice and can lead to liberating insight. This talk explores how to skillfully and correctly utilize this practice.

The Power of Vedana Practice (Feeling Tones)

Lisa explores the value of "don't know mind" in our practice and life and how dharma teachings can come alive and lead to deeper wisdom when we let go of "needing to know."

How to Cultivate Creativity and Wisdom Through Don't Know Mind

The teaching of the Buddha comprehends things in terms of the conditioned and unconditioned. This talk explores this teaching and how to practice with it skillfully.

Exploring the Two Truths of The Conditioned and Unconditioned

In Pali, equanimity is called upekkha, which signifies balance and the capacity to arrest the mind before it tips out of balance. When we are in balance we can feel pleasure fully without being lost in it and we can feel pain fully without mental suffering. It brings us to the middle way, but we may need to employ the factor of skillful evaluation to ensure we're on the right track.

Equanimity and The Middle Way

Practice Instructions from Southern Dharma retreat. Focusing on the First Foundation of Mindfulness to stabilize heart and mind.

Practice Instructions: Working With The First Foundation Of Mindfulness

This lovely guided meditation was created by Ken McLeod. It is based on the fourth Brahma Vihara or heart practice of equanimity.

Equanimity Guided Meditation

Exploring groundlesness through the relative and absolute perspective. What feels scary and disorienting from one perspective may be liberating from another.

Finding Ground in Groundlessness and Why it Matters to Our Practice

With practice we begin to have a direct experience that our awareness is without limits. But we often need to be reminded because our thinking mind, the combination of intellect and ego, may stay stuck in a limited view.

Circumference of Joy and Suffering (Retreat Dharma Talk)

An exploration of the intersection of equanimity and letting go and why its so important to our practice.

Equanimity and The Art of Letting Go (Retreat Dharma Talk)

Language and culture have a strong influence on how time is understood: not everyone views time as linear from past to present and future. Yet a more universal understanding underlies the impermanent nature of this human form. We can find equanimity in both presence and impermanence.

Equanimity in Presence and Impermanance (Retreat Dharma Talk)

Forgiveness Guided Meditation

Sankhara dukkha (the stress/suffering of everyday life) is often obscured because most of us are so accustomed to it. It often appears as "inconvenience." Yet its also one of the most accessible doorways to waking up and liberation when we don't turn away.

Waking Up To Everyday Inconvenience

If you think you’re enlightened, try spending a week with your family. 
- Ram Dass

For many the holidays are a time to connect with family, which can be warm and beautiful. They can also be fraught with drama, internally or externally. But the holidays can also be an opportunity to see where our hooks are more clearly and to practice mudita and compassion.

Practice Tips For The Holidays and Beyond

Guided Self Compassion Meditation

With meditation, we need let go of the illusion of control. When we do, we begin to see that the backdrop to all our mental activities is unbound awareness. 

Sometimes the path must be worked with intention, realigning ourselves with the teachings, with practice, with lovingkindness. Gradual cultivation. Sometimes it becomes a part of our life like a fish in water and we often don’t even notice the water.

When the Path Becomes Natural

What can we learn from Pali, the language of the Buddha? Many Pali words, with no English equivalent, have nuances that can help inform the path and practice. Pali is an ancient, defunct language, and interpretations aren’t always exact, so it takes some investigation. In this dharma talk, I explore some specific Pali words that can help clarify the path of practice and awakening.

Pali As A Path To Awakening

Karma is action in Buddhism, driven by intention. With practice we cultivate the ability to choose our response and our actions, internally and externally. We might think our intentions are good and so our actions will follow, but our intentions are often under the influence of strong conditioning that prevents us from living our choices. But with practice, we can find our way to greater freedom.

Karma, Choice And The Mind

Procrastination is not always what it seems. Knowing what's true and gaining insight is  about looking deeper, to our relationship with time, with ourselves and our intentions. This track includes  short guided meditation on exploring procrastination experimentally.

Procrastination And The Liberating Insight Of What's Beneath (plus a Guided Meditation)

The Three Marks in Buddhism are well known as a core teaching of the Buddha: Anicca (impermanence) anatta (no self) and dukkha (suffering).  But you may not know that there are also three doorways to awakening that intertwine with the three marks.  There are many doorways to awakening but in this talk I'll explore these.

The Three Doorways To Awakening

To cultivate a balanced dharma practice, we need to investigate joy just as we do suffering - to understand the mind in joy as well as sorrow. The key is bringing conscious awareness to this experience on and off the cushion.

Investigating Joy As An Enlightenment Factor

These instructions provide an entry point into the practice when stability and presence are needed to settle into meditation practice. This is as applicable at home as on retreat.

First Morning Spring Retreat Practice Instructions

Deepening practice through the five spiritual strengths.

Second Morning Spring Retreat Instructions - Practicing with the Five Spritual Strenghts

What is consciousness and how is it different from awareness? This talk explores this question and how it applies to practice.

An Exploration Of Consciousness In Practice

Dharma Wisdom And The Three Marks Of Existence

Last Day Retreat Instructions And Guided Feeling Tones Practice

How does the experience of a total eclipse resemble meditation and awareness? How do we rediscover freshness and awe even in the simple things and deepen our love and care for the earth? This talk explores these questions and more.

An Invitation To Awe

In Buddhism, compassion is ultimately seen as infinite but we often have trouble including ourselves fully. This talk addresses both. 

Compassion is Unlimited

Suchness is the the very essence of things, it points to the nature of reality free from conceptual elaborations and subject-object distinctions. But how do we wake up to it, right where we are? This talk explores the path to suchness.

"Suchness" and Waking up to What Is

From a recent visit to Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley. Its one thing to read about the history, but another to be at a key place where this happened, to see it and hear the perspective of someone whose ancestors lived through it. My practice was to stay open to "don't know mind" and take in what I saw, heard and felt without preconceived ideas.

Dharma Lessons From Navajo Country (Don't Know Mind)

This guided meditation facilitates open awareness, a mind as wide and limitless as the sky. 

Mind Like Sky Guided Meditation

This guided meditation focues on on offering lovingkindess  for ourselves and loved ones, neutral people and even helps create a framework of helpful phrases for offering compassion to difficult people.

Guided Lovingkindness Meditation

We can only experience ease and "suchness," the way things truly are, in moments of not wanting, of moments when we are not trying to control things. This is the backward step into this moment, where freedom is always available.

Relax - Nothing is Under Control

If you enjoy these dharma talks and guided meditations and would like to support my work, please consider making a donation. Donations can be made through Venmo @lisadharma or Paypal lisa@lisaernst.com. Thank you.

Lisa Ernst is a meditation teacher, artist and founder of One Dharma Nashville. In her teaching, Lisa emphasizes both transformational insight and everyday mindfulness as an invitation to embrace all of the path’s possibilities. She has been meditation for over 30 years and teaches classes and retreats internationally.

Popular tracks by One Dharma Podcast