Sila—Not Killing, Stealing, Lying—as a Path to Nibbana
Date: 2025-02-20 Thursday
As many of you know, Buddhist ethics - sila in Pali – isn’t exactly a moral code but rather a way of cultivating healthy actions of body, speech and mind that support us and others in life. Also it’s not a crisp boundary of right and wrong, but rather a training, a core part of our Dharma practice.
For this first session will be exploring the three most straightforward of the five: training in not killing, training in not lying, training in not stealing. We’ll see how subtle these three can be, and how much these become a diamond edge in our practice.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
How the Third and Fourth Noble Truths Move Us Toward Freedom
Date: 2025-01-16 Thursday
For the first month of 2025 we’re going to the root of the Buddha’s teaching: the four noble truths.
As many of you know these four – the unsatisfactoriness of un-awakened existence, the cause of this unsatisfactoriness or suffering, the possibility of freedom, and how to achieve that freedom – are shared by all Buddhist traditions.
Thus these four aren’t basic but core, meaning that if we truly realize these four, we will awaken. With this in mind we’ll be exploring these four in ways that you can bring into your practice, into your daily lives. This is fruitful material!
The third and fourth noble truth are in away even more important, because they offer the way out, freedom from dukkha. The third explores the nature of that freedom – nibanna – while the fourth is step-by-step directions – the noble eightfold path - to take us to that freedom.
The four noble truths are so central to the Buddha’s teachings – in fact among the first things he taught - they seem a good way to start the year. Also people have asked for more core teachings, and it doesn’t get more core than this. And third, Seattle Insight will be exploring the four noble truths over the entirety of 2025, so this is in a small way paralleling that.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
The Possibilities of the First and Second Noble Truths
Date: 2025-01-02 Thursday
For the first month of 2025 we’re going to the root of the Buddha’s teaching: the four noble truths.
As many of you know these four – the unsatisfactoriness of unawakened existence, the cause of this unsatisfactoriness or suffering, the possibility of freedom, and how to achieve that freedom – are shared by all Buddhist traditions.
Thus these four aren’t basic but core, meaning that if we truly realize these four, we will awaken. With this in mind we’ll be exploring these four in ways that you can bring into your practice, into your daily lives. This is fruitful material!
We will explore these four over two weeks, Jan. 2 and Jan. 16. For this upcoming 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 2 sit we’ll explore the problem – what does unsatisfactoriness or suffering mean, and what causes it? (Dukkha is the proper Pali word, which helps us get direct to the heart of the matter.)
Then on Jan. 16 we’ll explore the solution – what is freedom from dukkha, and how do we get there?
The four noble truths are so central to the Buddha’s teachings – in fact among the first things he taught - they seem a good way to start the year. Also people have asked for more core teachings, and it doesn’t get more core than this. And third, Seattle Insight will be exploring the four noble truths over the entirety of 2025, so this is in a small way paralleling that
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Learnings from the Buddha’s Life After Awakening
Date: 2024-12-19 Thursday
As we enter the sacredness of the Christmas season, it’s also a time to explore the inner qualities of the Buddha.
Our Eastside Insight tradition is to explore some aspect of the Buddha’s life, or that of his chief disciples, before Christmas. This year we’re going to break this into two sections, the first about the Buddha’s life before awakening, and the second about the time after.
On Dec. 5 we explored the Buddha's life before awakening, and what we can learn from the situations he faced, and the choices he made, which support and inform our own spiritual journeys.
For this Dec. 19 sit we’ll be exploring who the Buddha was after he awakened, some of the choices he made and avenues he offered, and what they mean in our lives. A tentative title is: Lessons from the Buddha after Enlightenment
The enlightened Buddha can seem so beyond our lives, that it can be hard to know how to relate. But there are many touch points or parallels between his life and our own, helpful for our own life journeys. We will explore these together.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Learning From the Buddha’s Choices Before Awakening
Date: 2024-12-05 Thursday
As we enter the sacredness of the Christmas season, it’s also a time to explore the inner qualities of the Buddha.
Our Eastside Insight tradition is to explore some aspect of the Buddha’s life, or that of his chief disciples, before Christmas. This year we’re going to break this into two sections, the first about the Buddha’s life before awakening, and the second about the time after.
Thus for this 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5 session we will explore the Buddha's life before awakening, and what we can learn from the situations he faced, and the choices he made, which support and inform our own spiritual journeys.
Remember the Buddha before he awakened perhaps wasn’t that much different from anyone in our sangha. He was living a life of sensory pleasures and comfortable conditions, although he also was increasingly nagged by questions about the meaning of life, and the transience of everything he was doing.
Let’s see what we can learn from his journey forward 2,600 years ago, and what we can apply to our journey forward into 2025.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Finding Equanimity Within the Polarization of These Times
Date: 2024-11-21 Thursday
As we move into potentially difficult times, mindfulness of our internal feelings (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral - called vedanas), and mind states, can be powerful tools. Just through this mindfulness we can navigate difficulties with more equanimity, and thus be more able to support others.
For the upcoming Nov. 21 sit we’ll be exploring these two – vedanas and mind states – as a pair, with a particular focus on utilizing them to stay present and on keel when we’re being buffeted. Some of us may be feeling anxiety these days, and we can authentically feel what arises without being incapacitated, without losing the moment-by-moment joy of life itself.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Pilgrimage Thailand-Nepal Slideshow & Talk
Date: 2024-11-07 Thursday
Some of you know I’ve been on pilgrimage for three weeks, and I’m planning to share that with you, with photographs, at the sit. It will be hybrid, so we’ll have photos up on the big video screen at Northlake Church in Kirkland, or on your own screens via Zoom, wherever you are.
As some of you know I’ve been traveling with Jason Bartlett as pilgrim partners, and we’ve basically done three things. We spent two weeks living and practicing in three Theravada monasteries in Thailand, with quick side visits to two others.
Then we went to Kathmandu, Nepal, to experience some key elements of Mahayana Buddhism, in particular the Boudhanath Stupa, the Swayambhu Stupa, and last the Asura Cave, where Padmasambhava practiced.
Finally we went to Lumbini, also in Nepal, where the Buddha was born. In addition to the Maha Devi Temple, which marks exactly where he was born, Lumbini includes a quite-amazing array of Buddhist monasteries and temples, some of which we visited and practiced in
The entire trip brought the path alive in some profound ways, including encounters with amazing masters. My aspiration is to share that with you all, to bring it alive for you, to support you in your dharma journeys.
How the King’s Bull Elephant Sutta Encourages Us on the Path
Date: 2024-10-03 Thursday
You might have wondered about the four ways that a person on the path, can be compared to a “king’s bull elephant.”
OK, maybe you haven’t thought about that but the Buddha did, and the result is one of his most stirring suttas – Bull Elephant - number 114 in the Book of Fours of the Numerical Discourses.
This sutta brings a powerful sense of what it means to continue on the path despite obstacles. It infers that obstacles are inevitable, as they are in all of life, but that dharma obstacles can be uniquely overcome.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
How the Truth of Dhamma is Reflected in NDEs (Near-Death Experiences)
Date: 2024-09-05 Thursday
Given that a key question of our lives on the path is that of life and death, and what happens to us after death, I’ve for years been investigating different aspects of this core question.
This last week I took a big leap and attended the annual conference of the International Association of Near Death Studies, which this year was at a hotel on tribal land south of Phoenix. This four-day immersion among people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs), many of whom are leading peer-reviewed research on the subject, was mind opening. Profound were exchanges I had with multiple NDE “experiencers,” as well as with several Buddhist practitioners and leaders at the conference, many of them are exploring these questions on paths similar to my own.
I emerged from the event, after hearing from multiple people who have had NDEs, concluding that NDEs are indeed real and authentic phenomena. It’s of course up to any of us what we’ll make of them, but I’ll offer some wisdom I heard, and how it may support and even complement our Buddhist practice and view.
Just to point us in a similar direction, the title of what I’ll be offering this Thursday, Sept. 5, is: “Aligning the truth of Dharma and NDEs.”
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Bringing the Word “Buddho” Into Daily Practice
Date: 2024-08-01 Thursday
Sometimes on the path we need some help turning toward the potential of awakened mind, away from distractions.
Thai forest tradition offers us tools we in the West don’t often encounter or use. Paramount among these is the word “buddho,” a mantra if you will, that we can use as part of sitting meditation, and also in daily life.
Here’s a quote from the great Thai master Ajahan Boowa, a contemporary of Ajahn Chah:
“Regardless of whether I was seated in meditation, walking meditation, or simply doing my daily chores, the word buddho resonated deeply within my mind at all times.”
For this upcoming Aug. 1 sit we’ll be exploring the word buddho, and how you can use it during formal meditation, and during other parts of your day. This is an area I’ve been cultivating quietly for a long time, and it seemed time to share what I’m learning.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Cultivating Lovingkindness and Compassion Toward Even the Most Difficult
Date: 2024-07-18 Thursday
For this sit we will be exploring loving-kindness for all beings
Here in contentious times, cultivating loving-kindness is a key to a happier life, and to bringing happiness to others. Here we will explore the "not-sticky" aspect of loving kindness...how this deep sense of goodwill toward others includes those with whom we have heart connections, those we hardly know, and those with whom we strongly disagree.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Navigating Death and the Question of Rebirth
Date: 2024-06-20 Thursday
For those of you interested in near-death experiences, and the evidence they offer about continuity of consciousness after this life, I'm happy to share that near-death experiencer Eben Alexander joined with the two monks of Clear Mountain Monastery for an unusual online Q & A. The two monks of Clear Mountain Monastery - Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho - are amazing beings in their own right, so this should be a fascination conversation.
Watch the conversation here on YouTube
What he shares will mesh with the June 20 session of Eastside Insight Meditation, when we will be exploring multiple aspects of the fact of death. In particular we’ll be exploring these two seemingly contradictory poles: On the one hand the urgency to progress on the path as much as possible in this lifetime, and on the other hand the seeming boundlessness of many lifetimes ahead.
Eben is a former neurosurgeon who had a very deep near death experience after several days in a coma when his brain was, according to medical instruments, offline.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Three Steps to Awakening
Date: 2024-06-06 Thursday
This week we’ll be exploring a wonderful sutta in the Numerical Discourses, which describes the path in a way easy to digest and to fulfill. We’ll be offering this to clarify our journey forward, in a way that hopefully will be helpful to you.
The sutta is in the Book of Threes, 92 (1) Titled Urgent:
“So too, bhikkhus, there are these three urgent tasks of a bhikkhu. What three? (1) The undertaking of the training in the higher virtuous behavior, (2) the undertaking of the training in the higher mind, and (3) the undertaking of the training in the higher wisdom.”
We’ll explore these three, and some expansions of them later in this section of the Book of Threes, to see what light they shed on how we progress on the path.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
How to Cherish Yourself When There is No Self
Date: 2024-05-16 Thursday
This week we’ll be exploring one of the seeming conundrums of the path: How to cherish yourself when there is no self.
As you’ll see, a key part of navigating this – cherishing ourselves as we would any other sentient being – comes back to the essential question of who we are, what we’re ultimately made up of, and if there is any inherent self there to doubt or not cherish.
This resonates with the title of one of Anam Thubten’s books: “No Self, no Problem.”
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
How to Bring Mindfulness to Thinking
Date: 2024-03-21 Thursday
For this evening we will be exploring what often seems the primo bugaboo of meditation, the constant arising of thinking. While it can seem a problem, and there’s benefit if and when a quieter and more centered mind arises, there just as much benefit from being mindful of busy mind.
We’ll see that part of our problem isn’t that thinking is arising, but that we believe there’s an “I” doing that thinking. As we see through that identification, the entire skein starts to unravel, into freedom.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Unpacking the Four Foundations of Mindfulness
Date: 2024-03-07 Thursday
For this week we’ll be doing a sweep of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, something that can be extremely helpful with your practice life.
The four foundations are the very core of how the Buddha taught us to do mindfulness practice, and rich with subtleties and depth. But just because of this depth, teachings on them tend to be long and multi-part, and books tend to be large, so we’re taken away from the overview to the parts.
For this session we’re going to sweep over the four in one session, with some tips about how to use them in our practice, and some understandings about how the four interconnect.
Whether you’re new to the practice or seasoned, these four foundations always have new gold to offer us.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
One Perfect Night: Bringing Your Practice to the Present
Date: 2024-02-01 Thursday
For this week we’ll be exploring two of the Buddha’s most vibrant suttas about conducting our path journey in present life – MN 131 and 131 – both of which are often called “A single Excellent Night.”
You’ll find this very helpful for keeping your sense of direction, and momentum, in the midst of the peculiarities of 2024.
Here’s a link: Bhaddekaratta Sutta: An Auspicious Day.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Energizing Our Path and Practice in 2024
Date: 2024-01-04 Thursday
For this first sit of the year, Thursday, Jan. 4, we’ll be exploring tactics and attitudes for keeping our practice revitalized in the coming year. Our spiritual path is there to help us, to bring joy to life, so let’s look at how we can deepen our practice in 2024, with the moment-by-moment awareness that is at the center of how we grow and give.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
How the Life of Moggallana, One of the Buddha’s Two Chief Disciples, Informs Our Own Journeys
Date: 2023-12-21 Thursday
As is our tradition, we’ll be touching on the sacred life of the Buddha, at this most sacred time for our Christian sister and brothers. So for this sit we’ll be exploring the life and manifestation of the great master and monk Mogallana.
The Buddha had two chief disciples, Sariputta and Mogallana. This latter was known for his sometimes-miraculous powers, but also for his great compassion and kindness. Mogallana was the disciple who could take students all the way to becoming an arahant. Let's see how his life, the choices he made, inform our own lives, our possibilities, and our practice.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Benefiting from the Parallel Teachings of Buddha and Jesus
Date: 2023-12-07 Thursday
With the sacred holiday season on us, we're going to explore the limitless kindness of two great masters - the Buddha and Jesus Christ - and see how they parallel. There's much to learn from the similarities of these two great beings, who lived 500 years and thousands of miles apart
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.