This talk provides information about how to identify and set aside the five hindrances to concentrated and tranquil awareness, preparatory to developing the process of Awakening through the practice of vipassana, insight into the conditioned nature of the mind.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  Renouncing The Five Hindrances

Samadhi describes how the mind is unified during the process of Awakening, and this talk reviews the various stages of concentrated awareness that are cultivated.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  JHANA CULTIVATION-IS IT NECESSARY  and Samadhi Passadhi-Unifying a Distracted Mind

This talk describes a way that Buddhist psychology explains human personality formation as an aggregation of five factors in order to “deconstruct” the belief that there is an enduring/autonomous self.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  REVIEWING THE FIVE AGGREGATES

A core principle of Buddhist psychology is paticca samuppada, dependent origination.  During this talk, an alternative translation is offered–contingent provisional emergence–which incorporates contemporary scientific and psychological understandings of this important concept for understanding how karma forms and how it can be changed through diligent and mindful clear knowledge of what arises and passes away in consciousness.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  CONTINGENT PROVISIONAL EMERGENCE AND KARMA

This talk provides a way to understand how one’s self-experience develops from what is termed “self-state conflict” through “self-state integration”, leading to “self-state liberation”.  We all experience conflict between how socially conditioned ideals of oneself and the world are conflicted, and how diligent, mindful, and clear knowing of Buddhist principles and practices cultivates an integrative process of personality organization–“good mental health”– and how this sets the conditions for spiritual Awakening.

 

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  Self-State Integration And The Awakening Process

This talk provides a review of how to understand the anatta doctrine from a contemporary scientific and psychological perspective in order to realize the absence of and enduring/autonomous self.

This talk on the last night of the retreat describes various areas of home life that are benefited through diligent and mindful application of the principles and practices retreatants learned and cultivated during the retreat.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  AWAKENING PRACTICES AT HOME

This guided meditation provides an investigative review–how to recognize and cultivate each of the Seven Awakening Factors in order to facilitate the development of each, individually and as a coherent group.

This guided meditation focuses attention on how to mindfully investigate the transient nature of all subjective experience–of sensations, feelings, thoughts, and the characteristics of consciousness.

This meditation provides support for deepening the stability and tranquility of the mind through using breath/body awareness, with the intention to keep “letting go” and accepting whatever physical discomfort that might occur, while still going deeper.