In the wake of the bombing of the World Trade Center, we would do well to remember the Buddha’s teaching that only love dispels hate and to practice forgiveness — forgiveness for the person, not the act. Forgiveness is clouded by pain and confusion. Resentment can be so strong that it impedes our ability to forgive. Reflection helps us to see the way things are. When we practice forgiveness, we are doing it to find freedom for ourselves and to stop the cycle of hatred in the world. Forgiveness reflects our deepest values and is a way to be proactive, not reactive.

2001-09-23, PWM

Forgiving the Unforgivable

Practice keeping the mind balanced when physical sensations and sounds arise during meditation. The mind can stay balanced even during the unexpected.

Finding Equanimity in Meditation

Anger is traditionally taught as one of the five hindrances and as an aspect of aversion. This talk examines anger through a story. With which of the characters in this story do you most closely identify — the prince king, queen, teacher, warrior, or apprentice?

1999-09-26

Anger: A Pair of Rulers

Our inability to comprehend clearly the way things are can cause suffering for ourselves and others. It can show up in our communications, in our relationships, and in our spiritual practice. Ambiguity can also be internal or external. As we become more mindful and tolerant of our ambiguity, we may find more clarity and experience less ambivalence.

2009-08-23

Ambivalence, Ambiguity and Ambition, Part 1

How do you make a decision, when there's no good decision to be made?

Whatever the Question, Mindfulness is Always Part of the Solution

The Buddha taught what are often called the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, in which you systematically learn how to pay attention to and investigate what arises in your mind, whether the experience comes from one of your five body senses or from the mind generating thought. It this talk we discuss the Second Foundation of Mindfulness: Noting the pleasant-, unpleasant-, or neutral-feeling tone that accompanies every moment’s experience.

How Pleasant & Unpleasant Feelings Prevent Conscious Choice

What is unique about the Buddhist teachings? Conditionality (the law of cause and effect), the Four Noble Truths, the practice of mindful awareness, and the power of self-reliance differentiate Buddhism from other spiritual traditions.

4 Things Unique to the Buddha's Teachings

One of the tools the Buddha taught for gaining insight is mindfulness, the ability to be fully aware in the moment. Mindfulness enables you to go beneath the surface level of moment-to-moment life experience, which is clouded with emotions, to clearly see the truth of what is happening.

SR Monday and Wednesday Talks http://www.spiritrock.org/

Mindfulness: Fully Aware in the Moment

How can we live with disappointment? Moffitt details how the dharma is helpful when we are experiencing the three fields of disappointment: when we anticipate disappointment, when it has arisen, and when we are living with the after-effects of disappointment.

1999-01-31, PWM

Disappointment

Learn how to do walking meditation and various walking techniques.

2010-03-14

Walking Meditation Instruction

A 37-minute guided sit. Receive with equanimity the experience of knowing the body in this moment without judging, comparing, or fixing. What's true in the body just now?

Loving Kindness (Metta) for the Body Meditation

In this meditation, we are reminded that we direct attention where we choose because it is skillful. The Satipatthana Sutta is the Buddha’s core teaching on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness: Mindfulness of the body in the body; Mindfulness of feeling tones in feeling tones (whether something is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral); Mindfulness of the mind in the mind; Mindfulness of objects of the mind.

Guided Meditation Satipatthana

The period of time just after waking up in the morning provides a rich opportunity for developing new habits of mind. Your mind is fresher, quicker, more flexible, and less perturbed in those first moments after waking up than at any other point in the day. You are less defined by your stories, less consumed by the soap opera of your life, and not so trapped in your persona. If you devote just five minutes to grounding yourself in your intentions while you’re still lying in bed, you can dramatically improve your sense of well-being and reduce the amount of emotional chaos in your life.

2010-12-12

Starting your Day with Clarity

Fear is an emotional response to a perception received through one of the sense gates. There are different types of fear. A difficult challenge is to know what is true when our nervous system is activated. In this talk, Phillip Moffitt targets three points where we can use our mindfulness practice to find freedom in relation to fear.

2002-11-10, PWM

Fear I

Recognizing the truth of anicca (that everything is impermanent) can be helpful in coping with fear. When fear arises we can self-soothe through relaxation and surrender.

Fear and Uncertainty

The Buddha identified three kinds of happiness: dukkha-sukkha, or happiness that’s dependent on the conditions of your life; anicca-sukkha, or happiness that is based on our mind state; and sukkha-sukkha, happiness that’s independent of the conditions of your life or your mind state. This third type of happiness is the cessation that the Buddha talks about in the Third Noble Truth. This talk focuses on working with all three types of happiness as part of spiritual practice.

2007-02-18

Three Kinds of Happiness

Self-soothing begins with softening into your experience and then applying mindfulness to recognize that “this moment is like this.” From within the spaciousness that this softening creates, you can start to investigate the experience and gain access to insight.

Self Soothing and the Dharma

This is a guided meditation that can help you stay in the present, here and now. Here, now, not before, not after. There is no presence, no agency in the past. It's a memory of something gone, no longer present.

Fully Arriving In The Here And Now Meditation

As we begin this new year, we are coming out of the darkest time of the year and we are starting to notice the return of the light. Our journey towards wisdom follows a similar cycle of light and dark. Can we begin the year on a blank page? It's not that we don't have habits or previously formed realities. But we have a choice not to be defined by the past. We have a choice how we relate to this moment, this new chapter, here and now.

Do We Dare To Create A Blank Page?

Let's begin our meditation by simply being present with whatever is occurring in the mind. We're not concentrating around the breath or body. We're just being present with whatever arises.

Meditation: Being Present for Whatever Arises

Right effort refers to how you pay attention. You cultivate and train your mind in order to shift your attention from one object or thought pattern to another. You learn how to apply effort in this manner so that when you find yourself obsessing on a thought that is not wholesome, you have the ability to shift away from it. Such a shift comes from your wise understanding and right intention, not from aversion. When your mind is focused in a wholesome manner, you have the ability to sustain your attention.

Right Effort: Seeking the Charged

What is my experience in this moment? There's always something in our consciousness when we're awake. Consciousness of the environment, the earth element (heavy or light), the air element (still or moving). The instruments of mind can know so many different objects of experience—a mood, a memory, a plan, a fantasy, a comparison, a judgment.

Meditation: Knowing that Attention is Present

Right View means you are to engage in observation and reflection, which in turn leads to clarity and insight about what life does and does not offer. Right view is also referred to as wise understanding because it empowers you to live in harmony with life just as it is.

Mindfulness in the Context of Right View

Feel the breath and the body. What does it feel like, this breath? Can you witness its changing nature? The birth of the inhale, the birth of the exhale, and then they're gone. Immediate, here, now. Arising, passing, and being known.

Meditation: What is Now?

Equanimity is a key concept in vipassana practice. When the mind has equanimity and something pleasant arises, you experience the moment without trying to hold onto it and creating tension. If something unpleasant arises, your mind does not contract in a futile attempt to avoid what is arising. Instead, it stays open and relaxed even though you are having an unpleasant experience; therefore, you suffer less.

The Empowerment of Equanimity

Living in this realm brings inevitable stress, physical and mental pain, and disorientation from constant change. This has never been more true than during the Covid-19 pandemic of the past year. The paramis allow us to live with the truth of dukkha (experiencing unsatisfactoriness or disquiet) in a manner that’s empowering. This talk focuses on the paramis of patience and persistence and the endurance, steadfastness, and clarity that can be cultivated in practicing these two qualities.

- from Fall Insight Retreat, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, October 3, 2020

2020-10/02  SR Fall Insight Meditation Retreat with Phillip Moffitt, MA, SEP; Matthew Brensilver, PhD; Tuere Sala and Dawn Scott https://www.spiritrock.org/

Patience and Persistence: Two Empowerments from the Paramis

When we fully arrive both internally and externally, we create the conditions for mindfulness to take root and for presence to arise. With mindfulness and presence, we are in a place where we are empowered to be observer/participants of our lives and to make wise choices regarding our thoughts and actions.

- from Fall Insight Retreat, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, October 4, 2020

Dharma Wisdom with Phillip Moffitt

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