During this talk, April Koester reviews the Seven Awakening Factors, with a specific focus on the primary factor, Mindfulness, which is considered to be the “guardian” of the other six factors.

The focus for next week’s talk will be a review of the second of the Awakening Factors, Investigation of Mental Phenomena.

Continuing a review of the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, this talk describes how the Six Sense Bases contemplations further the process of “deconstructing” the belief in an enduring/autonomous self.  The first five bases–seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and sensations in the body–are interpreted and made meaningful by the sixth sense, consciousness, creating a self.  Transitions between various self-states, which arise and pass away almost instantaneously, are bound together by what are called “fetters”.  The task of Awakening is furthered through careful investigations of the transitory and impersonal self-states, and these insights gradually reduce the binding power of the fetters and liberate the mind from craving and clinging.  This talk, presented by Peter Carlson, also reviews what Theravada Buddhism calls the 4 stages of realization–each experience of Nirvana diminishes the potency of the fetters, leading to complete and total Awakening.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  Working Through the Fetters

The topic for next week will begin reviewing the Seven Awakening Factors, starting with Mindfulness.

This talk is presented by Allie Vaknin, who reviews the Five Aggregates, an important category of the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness.  During the talk, she reviews each of the aggregates in detail: Form, Feeling, Perception, Mind Conditioning Factors, and Consciousness.  The review includes a period for questions and comments by participants.

This talk can be complemented by the “Guided Five Aggregates Contemplation”, recorded the same night and posted in the Guided Meditations archive.

The topic for the next review is the next category within the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Six Sense Bases.

This guided meditation provides suggestions for identifying the characteristics of each of the five aggregates described in the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness Discourse: Form, Feeling, Perception, Mind Conditioning Factors and Consciousness.  it is intended to complement the Dharma talk entitled “Reviewing the Five Aggregates”, recorded on August 2, 2023.

During this talk, Lezlie Laws initially provides an overview of the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of Mental Phenomena.  She then describes how the Five Hindrances are recognized and effectively set aside.  This talk also includes a period of time for questions to be discussed.

The focus for the next talk will be the next category of the Fourth Foundation, the Five Aggregates.

This review, provided by April Koester, focuses on the Third Foundation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, which is intended to describe how the characteristics of various states of consciousness can affect our self-experiences.  The mind operates like a filter, “coloring” perceptions through various states such as desire, aversion, dullness, agitation, etc.  The goal of mindfulness and internal investigation is to understand the conditioning of the filtering process and, through Right Effort, create qualities of consciousness that provide an unfiltered view of the impermanent and non-self characteristics of subjective experience.

This talk first focuses on reviewing the Second Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of Feelings; the second focus is on a core concept of Buddhist psychology, Dependent Origination, within which mindfulness of feelings plays a key role.  Peter Carlson provides a contemporary rendition of dependent origination, Contingent Provisional Emergence, which describes the ancient concept using more contemporary psychological terminology.

There are two sets of notes accompanying this talk:  MINDFULNESS OF FEELINGS and Understanding Contingent Provisional Emergence

There is a guided meditation posted on this site intended to complement the contents of this talk: Guided Mindfulness of Feelings Contemplation

Next week’s talk will review the Third Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Mind

This guided meditation provides training in monitoring how feelings affect the mind and the ways mindfulness of feelings can regulate impulsive reactivity.

In the First Foundation of Mindfulness there is a section focusing on postural awareness and mindful movement, which is the focus of this talk.  In addition to reviewing these contemplations, the concept of the Four Clear Comprehensions is reviewed, comparing the traditional practices for renunciates with the related practices available for lay practitioners.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  Mindfulness of Body Postures With Full Awareness

The focus for the next talk will review the Third Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of Feelings, and will include a review of a core concept within Buddhism, Dependent Origination, which describes how the process of self-organization occurs, along with how mindfulness of feelings can further progress on the path of Awakening.

This talk provides an overview of the conceptual structure of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness–Right Mindfulness, within the Noble Eightfold Path.  The overview is accompanied by a review of the practice of anapanasati, mindfulness of breathing meditation, focusing on the traditional concepts of this practice, then contemporary neuroscientific studies that validate how the meditation practice affects the brain beneficially.

Here are two sets of notes prepared for this talk which provide a more comprehensive review than the posted recording:  Overview of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse (Repaired) and Reviewing Mindfulness Of Breathing Meditation Practice.

A recorded guided meditation “Guided Satipatthana Contemplation”, dated June 28, 2023, is posted in the Guided Meditation page and is intended to complement the topics reviewed during this talk.