Friday 1 December 2017

Anathapindika by Ed Haertel

In this fourth talk in the lecture series on the Great Disciples, the speaker, Ed Haertel, tells the life story of Anathapindika.

He was not a monk, and he is remembered as the foremost in generosity among the Buddha's followers. He received teachings from the Buddha that consisted a comprehensive code of conduct for conscientious lay followers of the Buddha. In this way, Anathapindika has become a benefactor to all those in the future, who try to follow the path of liberation.



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Wednesday 29 November 2017

TUESDAY TALK - Cultivating The Four Brahma Viharas by Martine Batchelor

This is the second of our new series of monthly talks that we are having at the West Wight Sangha.

As our meetings are shorter than those at the Newport Soto Zen group the talks are perforce also shorter.

This talk is Cultivating The Four Brahma Viharas by Martine Batchelor and is just under 26 minutes long.



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Thursday 9 November 2017

Angulimala: An Ethical Transformation by Shaila Catherine

In this third talk in the lecture series on the Great Disciples, Shaila Catherine, tells the life story of Angulimala and his transformation from notorious robber and murdered to a peaceful, compassionate, truthful, and awakened monk. It is an inspiring example of the power of restraint, and the potential for redemption. Habits and dispositions do not need to control our lives. We can stop unwholesome, unhealthy, and harmful courses of conduct. We can purify our minds.



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Friday 3 November 2017

Ananda; The Man With The Questions by Thanissaro Bhikkhu


In this second talk in the lecture series on the Great Disciples, the speaker, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, talks about the contributions by Ananda to the Dharma. Because of his incredible memory, what we know in the Pali Canon today came mostly from Ananda's recollection of the Buddha's teachings. He described in detail who came to the Buddha, what were their question/problem, and how the Buddha addressed that particular question/problem. This is an important contribution to our understanding of how the Dharma was taught, because so much of it depended on who was asking what, and what kind of teaching was the best for them. Another debt that we owe Ananda is that he asked the Buddha questions that no one had asked. And Ananda's questions in turn sparked the Buddha to explain things or do things that he otherwise might not have explained or done.



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Friday 27 October 2017

Kisa Gotami; Buddha's Deep Compassion Toward Women by Ayya Santussika


This talk is one of five in the lecture series the Great Disciples of the Buddha.

Ayya Santussika, in residence at Karuna Buddhist Vihara (Compassion Monastery), spent five years as an anagarika (eight-precept nun), then ordained as a samaneri (ten-precept nun) in 2010 and as a bhikkhuni (311 rules) in 2012 at Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara in Los Angeles.

 Ayya Santussika was born in Illinois in 1954 and grew up on a farm in Indiana. While being a single mother, she received BS and MS degrees in computer science and moved with her two children to the San Francisco Bay Area. She worked as a software designer and developer for fifteen years. Her search for deeper meaning and ways to be of service led her to train as an interfaith minister in a four-year seminary program that culminated in an Masters of Divinity degree and a brief period of practice as a minister before ordaining as a Buddhist nun.



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Friday 20 October 2017

The Parami of Generosity by Steve Armstrong

Steve Armstrong has studied the dhamma and practiced insight meditation since 1975. He served for many years at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts as Executive Director, Board member and senior teacher of the annual three month retreat. As a monk in Burma for 5 years, under the guidance of the late Sayadaw U Pandita, he undertook intensive, silent practice of insight and lovingkindness meditations and in Australia, he studied the Buddhist psychology (abhidhamma) with Sayadaw U Zagara. He continues his practice under the guidance of Sayadaw U Tejaniya at the Shwe Oo Min Meditation Centre in Rangoon. Steve is a co-founding teacher of the Vipassana Metta Foundation’s dharma sanctuary on Maui. He has been leading meditation retreats internationally since 1990, presenting the core teachings of the Buddha; and offering a variety of Buddhist mindfulness practices, encouraging cultivation of insightful awareness, and liberating understanding in all life activities.



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Thursday 12 October 2017

Happiness And The Gladness Of Non Remorse by Shaila Catherine

Shaila Catherine is the founder of Bodhi Courses (bodhicourses.org) an online Dhamma classroom,
and Insight Meditation South Bay, a meditation centre in Mountain View, California (imsb.org). She has been practicing meditation since 1980, with more than eight years of accumulated silent retreat experience, and has taught since 1996 in the USA, and internationally.

Shaila has dedicated several years to studying with masters in India, Nepal and Thailand, completed a one year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhana, and authored Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity, (Wisdom Publications, 2008). She has extensive experience practicing and teaching mindfulness, loving kindness, concentration, and a broad range of approaches to liberating insight.

Since 2006, Shaila has continued her study of jhana and insight under the direction of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw, and authored Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana (Wisdom Publications, 2011).



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Wednesday 11 October 2017

TUESDAY TALK - What About Karma by David Loy

This is the first of our new series of monthly talks that we are having at the West Wight Sangha. As our meetings are shorter than those at the Newport Soto Zen group the talks are perforce also shorter.


This talk is What About Karma by David Loy and is just under 30 minutes long.



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Friday 29 September 2017

Abiding With Creation by Rodney Smith

In this talk Rodney Smith explains how confusing the past with the creative present is the single
biggest issue facing practitioners of the Dharma.



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Friday 15 September 2017

Two Talks by Akincano Marc Weber

Akincano Marc Weber was born in Berne (Switzerland) and is a Buddhist teacher and contemplative psychotherapist. He learned to sit still in the early eighties as a Zen practitioner and later became a monk in Ajahn Chah’s tradition where he studied and practiced for 20 years in the Forest monasteries of Thailand and Europe. He has studied Pali and scriptures, holds a degree in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy and lives with his wife in Cologne, Germany from where he teaches Dhamma and meditation internationally.

This is the first of two talks by Akincano, The Hindrances, 4th Satipatthana



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The second talk is Vedana ( Feeling Tone) Symposium Paper Presentation.



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Friday 8 September 2017

Joshus Four Gates by Tenshin Roshi

Born in Manchester, England, Charles Tenshin Fletcher Roshi went to the United States in 1979 to study at the Zen Centre of Los Angeles with founder Taizan Maezumi Roshi. In 1994, Tenshin Roshi received Dharma Transmission (authorization to teach) in the White Plum lineage from Maezumi Roshi, and Inka from Genpo Merzel Roshi in 2006 (Zen Master, final seal of approval). He acted as administrator for many years at ZCLA and is now the primary teacher and abbot at Yokoji-Zen Mountain Centre. Tenshin Roshi is one of the few North American teachers officially certified as a Kokusaifukyoshi (Official Foreign Representative), a title appointed in 2009 by the Soto Zen Headquarters in Japan.



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Friday 23 June 2017

The Meaning Of Life by Ajahn Brahm




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Phra Visuddhisamvarathera, known as Ajahn Brahmavamso, or simply Ajahn Brahm (born Peter Betts on 7 August 1951), is a British Theravada Buddhist monk. Currently Brahm is the Abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery, in Serpentine, Western Australia, the Spiritual Director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, Spiritual Adviser to the Buddhist Society of Victoria, Spiritual Adviser to the Buddhist Society of South Australia, Spiritual Patron of the Buddhist Fellowship in Singapore, Patron of the Brahm Centre in Singapore, Spiritual Patron of the Bodhikusuma Centre in Sydney, and most recently, Spiritual Adviser to the Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project in the UK.

On 22 October 2009 Brahm along with Bhante Sujato facilitated an ordination ceremony for bhikkhunis where four female Buddhists, Venerable Ajahn Vayama, and Venerables Nirodha, Seri and Hasapanna, were ordained into the Western Theravada bhikkhuni sangha.

The ordination ceremony took place at Ajahn Brahm's Bodhinyana Monastery at Serpentine (near Perth, WA), Australia. There is no consensus in the wider tradition that bhikkhuni ordinations could be valid, having last been performed in Theravada communities over 1,000 years ago, though the matter has been under active discussion for some time. Brahm claims that there is no valid historical basis for denying ordination to bhikkunis.

I thought too when I was a young monk in Thailand that the problem was a legal problem, that the bhikkhuni order couldn’t be revived. But having investigated and studied, I’ve found out that many of the obstacles we thought were there aren’t there at all. Someone like Bhikkhu Bodhi [a respected Theravada scholar-monk] has researched the Pali Vinaya and his paper is one of the most eloquent I’ve seen – fair, balanced, comes out on the side of “It’s possible, why don’t we do this?”

For his actions of 22 October 2009, on 1 November 2009, at a meeting of senior members of the Thai monastic sangha, held at Wat Pah Pong, Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, Brahm was removed from the Ajahn Chah Forest Sangha lineage and is no longer associated with the main monastery in Thailand, Wat Pah Pong, nor with any of the other Western Forest Sangha branch monasteries of the Ajahn Chah tradition.

Whilst still a junior monk, Brahm was asked to undertake the compilation of an English-language guide to the Buddhist monastic code - the vinaya - which later became the basis for monastic discipline in many Theravadan monasteries in Western countries.

Friday 26 May 2017

Just This - The Bhiya Sutta by Doug Phillips

This talk by Doug Phillips is on one of my favourite Suttas, the Bhiya Sutta.



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Douglas Phillips is founder and guiding teacher of Empty Sky Vipasssa Sangha and a long time practioner of Vipassana and Zen. His teaching is strongly influenced by Vimala Thakar and J. Krishnamurti.

Friday 19 May 2017

Emptiness And Solitude by Stephen Batchelor

In this talk Stephen Batchelor explores the concept of emptiness and the fact that both it and solitude are described in relation to what is lacking.



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Friday 5 May 2017

In Between Experience by Gil Fronsdal

Gil Fronsdal is the primary teacher for the Insight Meditation Centre in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practised Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Centre where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Centre in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Centre . He is currently serving on the SF Zen Centre Elders’ Council.




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Friday 28 April 2017

A Concept of Self by Joseph Goldstein

One of our Sangha members suggested that the series of talks on the Satipatṭhāna Sutta by Joseph Goldstein might be appropriate for the Thursday Zen meetings. As I suspected they are just too long at an average of an hour for each talk. However, I did manage to find the following talk at a mere 45 minutes.

But what I also discovered when checking as to whether or not we had already had this talk was that we hadn't had ANY talks by Joseph Goldstein before!

So enjoy this classic on the real nature of The Self.



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Friday 10 March 2017

The Noble Eightfold Path by Jill Shepherd

This is a series of talks on the Noble Eightfold Path by Jill Shepherd. She began practising insight meditation in Thailand in 1999, and since that time has lived and worked at several meditation centres and monasteries in the US, Australia, England, and Thailand.

She recently spent seven years on staff at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts, where she participated in several long retreats and Buddhist study programmes, as well as offering weekly meditation classes at a nearby men’s prison. She is a graduate of the IMS / Spirit Rock teacher training program in the US, under the guidance of Joseph Goldstein and Gil Fronsdal.

Developing Wisdom, The Four Noble Truths And An Overview Of The Noble Eightfold Path.



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Right View And Right Thought



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Right Speech



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Right Action And Right Livelihood



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Right Effort



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Right Mindfulness Right Concentration



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Friday 24 February 2017

Karma; Reframing An Imponderable by Tony Bernhard

A new and refreshing take on the significance of the concept of Kharma by Tony Bernard.

Tony Bernard is an ordained Chaplain and teacher. He maintains an active practice with inmates in Folsom Prison and hosts sitting groups in Davis. He sits on the board of the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies and teaches regularly around the Bay Area and Central Valley. His practice is non traditional, guided by his chaplaincy work in prison, his teaching and by his study of the early Pali scriptures.




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Friday 10 February 2017

Awakening by Shaila Catherine

Awakening is the profound aim of the spiritual life. Awakening is not described as a mystical goal,
we wake up to the four noble truths. We look squarely at the world and recognize that we cannot fix it, and through this clarity we realize the end of suffering. Enlightenment does not imply a separation from life, instead, it brings us to face the reality of lived experiences without resistance. Profound realization brings a deep equanimity and peace into every encounter; it is defined as the ending of greed, hatred, and delusion. Awakening is known through the result—the end of defilements, craving, and ignorance. This talk teases out the meaning of several difficult "D" words: disenchantment, dispassion, detachment. These terms do not imply an aversive response to experience, instead they play a vital role in the process of awakening. The talk explores profound spiritual experiences. It considers the danger of arrogance and conceit arising, clinging to, and corrupting enlightenment experiences. It discusses how to express, describe, and speak about our spiritual awakenings without identification.



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Friday 3 February 2017

Birthing The Quiet Mind by Rodney Smith

Another great talk by Rodney Smith. Here he talks of how the constant chatter and dialog of opinion in our minds drowns out the stillness and quiet of reality and what to do about it........








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Friday 27 January 2017

Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara by Ben Connelly

This fascinating and lively talk is by Ben Connelly, a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He teaches at Minnesota Zen Meditation Centre. Ben is also a professional musician and teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.






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Friday 6 January 2017

The Art Of Samadhi by Brian Lesage

In this talk Brian Lesage explores the art of cultivating samadhi by offering an initial understanding of it and its importance in relation to the whole of the Buddha's teaching of the Four Noble Truths.



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