Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin by hearing from two members of the community about how they are experiencing and responding to what's happening in the larger society and world in our times. Donald then discusses how we might respond on the basis of our practice, identifying the three areas of training--in wisdom, meditation, and ethics. Guided by wisdom teachings, we can see the society a...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Diana and Donald each speak for about 20 minutes. Diana focuses especially on relational metta practice in daily life, including with parenting. Donald speaks of the aspiration, as the great Tibetan teacher Shabkar, emphasizes, on having one’s life and practice be one. He then focuses on the different dimensions of individual metta practice in daily life. The two ta...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Practicing to develop lovingkindness (metta), warmth, kindness, and love is an ancient vocation. The Buddha’s teachings on metta echo in many ways what we find in Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other traditions. In this talk, we explore the aims of metta practice, how it works, and some of the different approaches to such practice. With the retreat overlapping with...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We explore the centrality of being skillful with intentions in our practice and a number of different ways of practicing to cultivate skillful intentions, in part related to the New Year. We look at the Buddha's account of karma (kamma in Pali) as intention, and his teaching on the importance of reflection in living with skillful intentions. Remembering the Chinese...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We start by tuning into our intentions, both our "larger" or "deeper" intentions for why we practice and a more specific intention for this practice session based on how we are in the moment (maybe really settled or maybe distracted by what happened yesterday). We then work to develop concentration (samadhi) in one of several ways, particularly setting an intention...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We continue with the exploration opened up last week in our examination of "skillful desire," starting again with the common misunderstanding of the Buddha's teachings as suggesting giving up all wanting of the pleasant and all not wanting of the unpleasant. There are, to be sure, some passages in the teachings which seem to suggest this approach; here is one exampl...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We start with settling for about 8 minutes followed by about the same time with basic mindfulness practice. Then we explore "moderate" experiences of pleasant or unpleasant when they occur, whether a bodily experience, an emotion, or a thought (or a mix), experiencing pleasant or unpleasant and seeing whether there follows wanting (or not wanting) and reactivity (ha...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Sometimes people interpret the Buddha's teachings as suggesting giving up all wanting of the pleasant and all not wanting the unpleasant, and that equanimity has no wanting or not wanting; there are some passages in the teachings which seem to suggest this approach. However, the Buddha in a number of ways pointed to what we might call "skillful desire." We explore t...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We start with settling for about 7-8 minutes followed by about the same time with basic mindfulness practice. Then we explore "moderate" experiences of pleasant or unpleasant when they occur, whether a bodily experience, an emotion, or a thought (or a mix), experiencing pleasant or unpleasant and seeing whether there follows wanting (or not wanting) and grasping (or...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) After a brief general account of the three ways of liberating insight, we look at each of the three--insights into impermanence, dukkha, and not-self--with a longer treatment of insight into not-self. There is an emphasis especially on how we practice in order to come to these insights. We close with a passage from Ajahn Chah pointing to the unity of developing sama...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We review the nature of samadhi, how it is a natural quality that surfaces in many human experiences, and its importance in meditation (and the teachings of the Buddha). We briefly examine the five jhanic factors that point to how samadhi deepens. We also look at several of the main challenges that arise as we practice to develop samadhi.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We continue the exploration from last week, beginning with Donald sharing a few of his experiences of being able to learn and practice when there have been differences of views and even conflicts. Then there is a review of some what we explored last week, including the importance in a functioning democracy of navigating differences of views, some of the factors maki...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin with settling and developing more concentration for about 10-12 minutes. Then we shift to mindfulness practice. In the last third of the session, there are instructions for exploring one's own views and opinions, including in relationship to others (connected with the talk).

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) How do we bring our practice to challenging conversations and discussions, including there are major differences in views and positions, whether on spiritual or social-politlcal or daily life matters? This is both a perennial practice question and a particularly important one in the current times. We begin our first of two explorations inviting the participants to e...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin with a review of how the Buddha saw "ignorance" of the basic nature of things (not so much of facts or information) as the basic problem of human life; we are as if asleep, caught in dream-like living, and need to "wake up." For the Buddha, we are especially ignorant about impermanence, dukkha (or reactivity--grabbing at the pleasant and pushing away the un...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin with about 7-8 minutes of developing stability of attention and less distraction, through concentration practice or some other practice. We then explore several aspects of how we "construct" experience. We look at impermanence in several ways, noticing the arising, staying and changing, and passing away with (1) the breath, (2) body sensations, (3) sounds,...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) The Buddha saw the core problem in human life as "ignorance"(avijjā), not an ignorance of facts or information, but rather a not-knowing about the basic nature of reality and our experience. The Dalai Lama tells us: "There is a fundamental disparity between the way we perceive the world, including our own experience in it, and the way things actually are." We explor...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin with about 7-8 minutes of developing concentration, becoming more settled and less distracted. We then explore the impermanence in several ways, noticing the arising, staying and changing, and passing away with (1) sounds, (2) body sensations, and (3) the open flow of experience (about 2 minutes). Then there is a period of mindfulness practice with the addi...

(East Bay Meditation Center) Sometimes it is thought that Buddhist practice is exclusively about "inner" transformation. However, the Buddha himself spoke of going out for the benefit of others and understood basic ethical guidelines socially. Later approaches and tradition, such as embodied in the rule of King Ashoka and the Mahayana vision of the bodhisattva, also manifest the connection of inne...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin by remembering the three core methods of training given by the Buddha (wisdom, meditation, and "ethics"), and their interrelationship. We reflect on how ethics has often been marginalized in Western Buddhism (and at times in Asian Buddhism). We then look in depth at the first lay ethical precept, non-harming, first in terms of the core teachings of the Budd...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) In this guided meditation, connected to the later talk on "Non-Harming," we begin with about 8 minutes of settling and becoming more present, developing more samadhi (concentration). Then there is a period of lovingkindness (metta) practice, including starting where the lovingkindness flows the easiest and then extending the lovingkindness to many other beings. This...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) This talk occurs five days after Joanna's death at age 96, and two days after Donald attended a wake for Joanna at her home, saying good-bye to her. Donald first met Joanna Macy in 1977, while still a student. When he moved to Berkeley, California in 1988, he helped start a neighborhood daily meditation group of ten households, including that of Joanna and her husba...

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin with a period of settling, developing greater samadhi or concentration, and then move to mindfulness practice, including giving some attention to noticing moderate or a little greater levels of pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tone. When we notice pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tones, is there any tendency toward grasping or pushing away, in habitual or autom...