“When we practice with all conditions, we gain improvisational skills for life; we learn how to creatively adapt to things outside our comfort zone, thereby widening the experience of peace that is independent of conditions.”
Dharma Talks
Improvising Through Fear: Dharma Talk
“The more we realize that most of our views of ourselves, of others, and of presumed limits regarding our talents, our health, and our happiness were mindlessly accepted by us at an earlier time in our lives, the more we open up to the realization that these too can change. All we need to begin the process is to be mindful.” – Ellen Langer
“Life is change; and if you don’t like it, it doesn’t think much of you either.” – Josh Summers
Flowing From Self-Doubt to Confidence: Dharma Talk
“To borrow language from music training, meditative training can be seen as a development and refinement of capacities for improvisational flow within and across the changing landscapes of rhythmic (physical), harmonic (energetic and emotional), and melodic (thinking) patterns of being.” – Josh Summers
On the Varieties of the Sleepy Experience: Dharma Talk
One form of drowsiness and low energy that can arise in meditative practice is the sort that stems from discouragement and disappointment. Very often, unacknowledged expectations can fuel a subtle frustration within one’s practice, and that discouragement, in turn, can zap one’s enthusiasm for practice. The key is to remember the simple orientation of practice: The only experience to have in mindfulness practice IS the experience that one is having, plain and simple. The encouragement is to hold and receive each and every experience with tender care.
A Tale of Two Selves: Dharma Talk
“The ‘transcendent’ big ‘S’ Self is one hundred percent present on and within each and every experience. In fact, the Self is what is conscious of every experience.” – Josh Summers
Fundamental Wrongness to Unconditional Rightness: Dharma Talk
“The path tends to move along a continuum from personal dukkha – or fundamental wrongness – to a transformational awakening – or unconditional rightness.” – Josh Summers
On Meditative Process and Experience: Dharma Talk
“The perch is the seed of stillness. Receptivity is the seed of awareness. And choice is the seed of surrender. In the beginning, these principles feel distinct, but with time, they become three facets of the same unified field of experience.” – Josh Summers
Anxiety’s Antidote: Dharma Talk
Natural selection did not program humans to be happy or to see the world accurately; it simply optimized our ability to get our genes into the next generation. This calculus extracts a cost on our mental health, and mindfulness is a medicinal practice heals this equation.
The Touchstone of Witness: Dharma Talk
“But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close friendship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness.” – David Whyte
The Tao of Progress: Dharma Talk
“The yin-yang symbol is not, therefore, what we call a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity.” – Alan Watts
Angulimala’s Karma: Dharma Talk
“Most people think there are a lot of bad people running around in the world. There aren’t a lot of bad people, there are a lot of bad ideas and bad ideas are worse than bad people because bad ideas are contagious. Bad ideas get good people to do horrible things.” – Sam Harris
Attuning, Atoning: Dharma Talk
“On the path we open to the experience of bad karma – created by ourselves and by others – and we turn it into good dharma, the development of compassion and wisdom.” – Larry Rosenberg
V for Vendetta: Dharma Talk
“The untrained mind gets lost and follows these things; it forgets itself, and then we think that it is we who are upset or at ease or whatever. But really, this mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful.” – Ajahn Chah
A Want For Nothing: Dharma Talk
“But imagine my surprise when, upon surrendering to wanting nothing, I am released from perceiving a lack, awakened by and to a want for nothing, instead.”
Who Knows Good News Bad News? – Dharma Talk
“The good only stands out in contrast to something relatively worse; the bad only emerges from a context of relative good. The wise old farmer appears to see life holistically, as a unified totality.”
Desire Refined: Dharma Talk
The transformation of desire is a critical component of the spiritual journey, but this transformation does not necessitate sacrifice and grim acceptance. Aligning one’s desire with the deeper quality of the Heart’s aspiration can infuse one’s practice with vitality and whole-hearted engagement.
Yes, The Unitive Mantra: Dharma Talk
As Alan Watts put so well, “No one can be moral – that is, no one can harmonize contained conflicts – without coming to a working arrangement between the angel in himself and the devil in himself, between his rose above and his manure below.”
The Way of Obstacles: Dharma Talk
Challenging energy is part of the path. Can we open to these energies with curious kindness? Can these energies be integrated within our being? This is the path.
Tuning the Lute: Dharma Talk and Meditation
Joseph Goldstein writes, “Effort becomes unskillful when there’s some idea of gain and a mind full of expectations, rather than an openness and receptivity to what is already.”
On Gratitude: Dharma Talk and Meditation
“As we peer into our experience, we peer into one of the biggest mysteries of all: The fact of our own consciousness peering back at the web of existence that created it.”
The Wings of Awakening: Dharma Talk and Meditation
Compassion without wisdom can lead to emotional burnout. Wisdom without compassion can lead to detached apathy. Together they balance and complement each other on the path.