Jill Shepherd's most recent Dharma talks (Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Auckland Insight Meditation) Some reflections on how the pāramī of patience and resolve provide crucial support for both regular meditation practice and retreat practice.

Includes an exploration of the need to honour natural rhythms, and how metaphorically "lying fallow" allows deeper healing and wisdom to emerge

(Auckland Insight Meditation)

(Te Moata Retreat Center)

(Te Moata Retreat Center) Beginning with physical sensations, knowing them as impermanent and insubstantial, then opening to sounds and mental activity; simply recognising experiences being known, without identifying with them as I, me, or mine

(Te Moata Retreat Center) An overview of the seven awakening factors of mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy (pītī), tranquility, samādhi and equanimity, and how these work together to support conducive conditions for insight to arise

(Te Moata Retreat Center) Acknowledging the inevitable ups and downs of being on retreat, making space for those changing conditions and orienting to self-compassion as needed for support to stay steady

(Te Moata Retreat Center) Exploring different aspects of muditā: as happiness for others' happiness; as appreciation or gratitude; as recognition of our own strengths or good qualities, as in the Buddha's instructions to Mahanama

(Te Moata Retreat Center) Exploring pleasant worldly and unworldly vedanā as a support for mettā; guided meditation orienting to the embodied energy of warmth and kindness, and inviting that energy to pervade in all directions

(Te Moata Retreat Center) How feeling-tone conditions reactivity when there's no mindfulness, then exploring vedanā in relation to the sense doors of seeing, hearing and the body

(Te Moata Retreat Center) An overview of kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity, and how they can be used as antidote to the hindrances