The Five Precepts
Date: 2023-11-16 Thursday
For this Nov. 16 sit we’re very happy to welcome Sooz Appel, a person of decades of practice experience, who serves as one of the Seattle Insight Meditation Society local dharma leaders.
Sooz’s talk will be:
Practicing with the precepts: making them your own.
She writes:
“The precepts are a powerful and often challenging part of the path. They are powerful because they offer practical guideposts for living an ethical life. They are challenging because often we don’t (or can’t or choose not to) follow them exactly.
Each of the precepts contain within it complexities and nuances. Whether it’s the challenges of gardeners facing if and how to eliminate unwanted “pests,” or lifestyle choices that may include intoxicants, or how to interpret “taking only what is given”—exploring these further is a fruitful conversation to have with ourselves and each other.”
Here’s some background on Sooz:
“Sooz Appel was introduced to Vipassana meditation in 1983 at a death and dying retreat with Stephen Levine. Later that year, she and two friends established Shanti Seattle, which offered emotional support to people who were dying. She joined SIMS when it formed and served on the board and as president from 2001-2003. Over the years, Sooz has filled nearly every volunteer position in SIMS and continues to give of her time and energy to the sangha. In addition to issues of death and dying, Sooz has offered mindfulness opportunities (classes and retreats) to teenagers through both the Seattle Teen Mindfulness Circle and Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme).
Sooz is semi-retired having spent 25 years running a recycling company with her life partner. She now helps to manage their commercial property with its dozen small business tenants.”
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Bringing Love to All, In a Tortured World
Date: 2023-10-19 Thursday
For this evening we’ll be exploring the limitlessness of loving kindness and compassion as the Buddha taught, and how he never conditioned that loving kindness on what people did. Cultivating this limitless loving kindness can be hard, when we find someone to blame. Thus we’ll take some time to see what that stretching is like, and how it can transform our ultimate attitude toward those with whom we disagree.
Let’s call this “Sharing love and compassion, with a world in pain.”
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Changing the Mind Through Lojong Practice
Date: 2023-09-21 Thursday
For this evening we’ll be exploring, in a brief dip into Mahayana, the practices around mind training .
In Tibetan Buddhism, the exercises of seven-point mind training, called Lo Jong, are a testing and beautiful way to harness the realities of life in a spiritual and transcendent manner. We will explore some of these aphorisms, and see how useful they can be in our own lives.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Bahiya Sutta: When You See, Just See
Date: 2023-09-07 Thursday
For this session we’ll be exploring the famous Bahiya Sutta, which is simultaneously about the high stakes of the path of awakening, and the possibility of attaining that goal. It also contains a simple Zen-like message, of the absolute immediacy of our practice.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Four Foundations: Fourth Foundation
Date: 2023-08-03 Thursday
For this session we’ll be exploring the fourth foundation of mindfulness, which is dhammas, sometimes translated as “’mind objects.”
This is a multi-part foundation, which can seem complex, so we’ll be focusing on what difference this fourth foundation can make in our hearts and minds. While in one way this fourth foundation can seem as a “list of lists,” in another it empowers us to find release, an open heart, just in the complexities that life inherently offers us.
Yes, this 2023 life is complex, but actually the essentials are just as they were 2,600 years ago at the time of the Buddha, and clarifying that helps bring us freedom now.
The four foundation of mindfulness are the Buddha’s core teaching on our practice of mindfulness, in the Satipatthana Sutta, #10 in the Middle Length Discourses (Majjhima Nikaya.) This sutta is an ever-revealing source of understanding, as we gradually deepen our mindfulness of all phenomena, and gain insight from that.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Four Foundations: Mind Qualities
Date: 2023-07-20 Thursday
For this session we’ll be exploring the third foundation of mindfulness, qualities of mind. One of the most elusive areas of our reality is the ever-changing aspect of our qualities of mind, whether grasping, aversive, restless, concentrated or other. In our mindfulness practice learning to apply mindfulness to these mind states is a great boon, lest they operate below the radar, influencing everything we think and do.
The four foundation of mindfulness are the Buddha’s core teaching on our practice of mindfulness, in the Satipatthana Sutta, #10 in the Middle Length Discourses (Majjhima Nikaya.) This sutta is an ever-revealing source of understanding, as we gradually deepen our mindfulness of all phenomena, and gain insight from that.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Four Foundations: Vedanas (Pleasant, Unpleasant, Neutral)
Date: 2023-07-06 Thursday
This week we’ll be continuing our exploration of the four foundations of mindfulness, by considering the second foundation…vedanas. This simple concept – that we instantly categorize sense door contact as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral – and automatically react, is far deeper than it seems at first.
In fact the category of vedanas is also one of the five skandas, the five factors that make up our sense of self.
Join us Thursday, and we’ll get a better sense of how mindfulness of vedanas can transform our lives, give us freedom no matter the condition.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Four Foundations: Body
Date: 2023-06-02 Friday
For the next four weeks, we’re continuing to explore the four foundations of mindfulness. For the upcoming June 1 meeting we’ll be looking at body, and why the Buddha so strongly emphasized body as an object of mindfulness.
The four foundation of mindfulness are the Buddha’s core teaching on our practice of mindfulness, in the Satipatthana Sutta, #10 in the Middle Length Discourses (Majhima Nikaya.) This sutta is worth repeatedly studying, because as we grow on the path, we will see aspects of the practice that we previously missed.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Four Foundations: Prelude
Date: 2023-05-19 Friday
For the next weeks, perhaps five, we’re going to exploring the four foundations of mindfulness. This is the Buddha’s core teaching on our practice of mindfulness, in the Satipatthana Sutta, #10 in the Middle Length Discourses (Majhima Nikaya.) This is such an important teaching to return to again and again, because it clarifies the very areas where we tend to be confused about the practice.
The journey of understanding what the Buddha is explaining to us, parallels our very journey of awakening.
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Renunciation and Awakening
Date: 2023-04-20 Thursday
This will be the second week of exploring renunciation. On April 6 we explored why renunciation isn’t self-denial, but rather shedding that which entangles. This week will be exploring how renunciation leads to the letting go of awakening, how renunciation is another doorway to freedom.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Renunciation and Daily Life
Date: 2023-04-06 Thursday
For the next two weeks we’re going to exploring renunciation: for the first week why renunciation isn’t self-denial, but rather shedding that which entangles; and for the second week, how renunciation leads to the letting go of awakening.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Seven Factors of Awakening 2: Joy, Calm, Concentration, Equanimity
Date: 2023-03-02 Thursday
The March 2 sit will be our second week exploring the seven factors of awakening. These seven are aspects of mind we may already be familiar with on the path, but they take on new light, and life, when considered in this context.
They are:
Mindfulness (sati, Sanskrit smṛti). To maintain awareness of reality, in particular the teachings (Dhamma).
Investigation of the nature of reality (dhamma vicaya, Skt. dharmapravicaya).
Energy (viriya, Skt. vīrya) also determination, effort
Joy or rapture (pīti, Skt. prīti)
Relaxation or tranquility (passaddhi, Skt. prashrabdhi) of both body and mind
Concentration (samādhi) a calm, one-pointed state of mind,[1] or "bringing the buried latencies or samskaras into full view"[2]
Equanimity (upekkhā, Skt. upekshā). To accept reality as-it-is (yathā-bhuta) without craving or aversion.
For this second session we’ll be focusing on Joy, relaxation, concentration and equanimity, after exploring the first three in the last gathering.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Seven Factors of Awakening 1: Mindfulness, Investigation, Energy
Date: 2023-02-16 Thursday
For the next two weeks, Feb. 16 and March 2, we’ll be exploring the seven factors of awakening. These seven are aspects of mind we may already be familiar with, but they take on new light, and life, when considered in the context of awakening.
They are:
Mindfulness (sati, Sanskrit smṛti). To maintain awareness of reality, in particular the teachings (Dhamma).
Investigation of the nature of reality (dhamma vicaya, Skt. dharmapravicaya).
Energy (viriya, Skt. vīrya) also determination, effort
Joy or rapture (pīti, Skt. prīti)
Relaxation or tranquility (passaddhi, Skt. prashrabdhi) of both body and mind
Concentration (samādhi) a calm, one-pointed state of mind,[1] or "bringing the buried latencies or samskaras into full view"[2]
Equanimity (upekkhā, Skt. upekshā). To accept reality as-it-is (yathā-bhuta) without craving or aversion
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Keeping Practice Alive in 2023
Date: 2023-01-19 Thursday
This sit we’ll explore keeping our dharma practice vital in 2023.
How do we keep our sense of direction, find inspiration, and keep going through the dry patches? (Hint…those arid bits are often secret doorways to next steps in growth.)
It’s just through this process of learning how to keep going, how to inspire ourselves, that we become self-sufficient on the path, able to inspire others.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Fresh Starts and Five Hindrances
Date: 2023-01-05 Thursday
In this sit, we’ll focus on a key understanding of the spiritual path, which is that it can be difficult in the beginning, and easy in the end.
In a way this may seem self-evident, because the very purpose of the path is to develop freedom irrespective of conditions. As we all know, conditions are undependable, and often difficult. But actually it’s baked into the very essence of what the path is – encountering obstacles and clinging and freeing ourselves of them – that things will be inherently harder in the beginning.
Fully realizing this is a freedom in itself, and brings with it tools to make this difficult beginning…easier.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Cultivating Wholesome Mind States
Date: 2022-11-17 Thursday
For November we’re exploring the wholesome and unwholesome mental qualities, and what we can do to cultivate the wholesome, and reduce the unwholesome. This is an important doorway onto the path, because our states of mind dictate how we understand the world, ourselves and each other.
Here’s one link with some perspectives on these teachings.
For this upcoming sit, we’ll explore cultivating the wholesome mental states, and how this can be a boon in our lives and our practice.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Reducing Unwholesome Mind States
Date: 2022-11-03 Thursday
For November we’re going to be exploring the wholesome and unwholesome mental qualities, and what we can do to cultivate the wholesome, and reduce the unwholesome. This is an important doorway onto the path, because our states of mind dictate how we understand the world, ourselves and each other.
Here’s one link with some perspectives on these teachings.
For this upcoming sit, we’ll be starting with exploring reducing the unwholesome, a core consideration in our progress on the path.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Learnings from a Monastery
Date: 2022-10-06 Thursday
Just getting back from a week at Abhayagiri Monastery, in the California hills north of the Bay Area.
For this sit I’m planning to offer some thoughts and perspectives on monastic life, on the fruit of dedicated practice, that hopefully you’ll find beneficial. Many things were uniquely impressive about these monks, and affirming of the transformational power and depth of our practice lineage.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Dharma, Monastics, and Happiness
Date: 2022-09-15 Thursday
For this we’ll be exploring a delightful list of positive attributes of monastics, at the time of the Buddha. There’s a lot to learn and absorb here, especially when we see how free and happy those monastics were.
The particular sutta MN 89, includes these lines:
"Here I see monastics living in concord,
with mutual appreciation,
without disputing,
blending like milk and water
viewing each other with kindly eyes.
"Here I see monastics smiling and cheerful,
sincerely joyful,
plainly delighting,
their faculties fresh,
living at ease,
unruffled,
subsisting on what others give,
abiding with mind [as aloof] as a wild deer’s."
After setting up the context of this sutta we’ll explore the above section line-by-line, with plenty of time for dialogue.
What’s engaging about this sutta is how it puts the fruit of the practice, how we can be in life itself, in human and tangible form.
In short, it’s about being happy.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.
Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind
Date: 2022-09-01 Thursday
For this sit, we’ll be considering a priceless teaching best known in Tibetan tradition, the “Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind.” This is a very precious teaching because it encourages us to not waste time…to use our extraordinary good fortune of life in a human body, to pursue the spiritual path as best we can.
While this is technically a Tibetan teaching, it’s also perfectly suited to encourage us on any aspect of the Buddhist path, including the Theravada.
Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.