Kaira Jewel Lingo's most recent Dharma talks (Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Offered on the Strength to Love retreat over the MLK holiday weekend at IMS, we explore how we can each give rise to bodhicitta, the mind of awakening and love, and support the realization of justice: the expression of love in public. Kaira Jewel first shares about the personal impact of Dr. King on her life, introducing her father, Al Lingo, who briefly offers a few stories of his time in the Civil Rights Movement working directly with Dr. King. She then explores the friendship between Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. King and their common effort to build the Beloved Community. We then look at the importance of cultivating our hearts and minds to be able to support justice in the world, and also how caring for ourselves is caring for others and vice versa. We look at how important it is to connect with our ultimate concern, because this provides an inexhaustible source of energy and confidence. We end with Dr. King's words condemning the war in Vietnam and the damaging effect of militarism on our collective health, and our current bloated military budget.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center)

(Insight Santa Cruz)

(Insight Santa Cruz)

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We introduce sending metta for all beings and the guided meditation leads us to offer metta to self, a dear friend or benefactor, neutral person, difficult person and then in the 2nd half of the meditation much guidance is offered for the ways we can include all beings in our metta.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin with Al Lingo, Kaira Jewel Lingo's dad telling stories of his time in the Civil Rights Movement working with Dr. King and then explore the importance of cultivating our hearts and minds to be able to support justice in the world, and also the importance of cultivating bodhicitta. We end with Dr. King's words condemning the war in Vietnam and the damaging effect of militarism on our collective health, and our current bloated military budget.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We cover what compassion is and how it can help soothe our pain much better than avoiding or denying it. We distinguish between compassion and pity and then offer a variety of compassion phrases we can use. In the guided meditation, we begin with a dear friend who is undergoing some kind of suffering and then move on to ourselves, offering self-compassion for our own physical or mental suffering.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We cover the 3 elements of metta practice: generating the energy of friendliness, visualizing the person/being you are sending metta to, and repeating the phrases. We offer various versions of the phrases and introduce the first few categories of beings we can send metta to: self, benefactor, and dear friend. In the guided practice we begin by feeling held and loved by others and then offer this to ourselves, then move on to benefactor and dear friend.

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) In this Opening talk, the teachers offer a land acknowledgement, introduce themselves, and Kaira Jewel gives a short talk on what metta is, how to practice metta and how we can take refuge in the retreat container.