Dharma Seed - dharmaseed.org: Hugh Byrne's most recent Dharma talks

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The Buddha said, "I teach one thing, suffering and its end." His first and central teaching on the Four Noble Truths provides us with an understanding of suffering and its origins in craving/clinging; and how it’s possible to end suffering by abandoning clinging and the path to follow to end suffering in our lives—the Noble Eightfold Path. We can bring this teaching to bear on any moment or experience of our life and find freedom from suffering.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk explores the Buddhist archetype of the bodhisattva and its universal quality across spiritual and other traditions of commitment to the transformation and awakening of one’s own heart for the benefit and freedom of all beings. The civil rights movement in the U.S.—and the role and courage of Rosa Parks and other ordinary people—is presented as a ‘bodhisattva movement’ and a model and encouragement for the challenges we face today.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk and guided meditation includes reflections on how cultivating compassion towards ourselves is essential for our own well-being and happiness—and a key to opening our hearts to the suffering of others. It concludes with a guided self-compassion meditation.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) As we bring loving awareness to our all that is arising in our bodies, hearts, and minds, there is a natural falling away of the illusion of separation - of ‘us’ and ‘them’ - and the cultivation of a wise and compassionate heart. With our hearts open to the suffering of the world, the Bodhisattva path of commitment to healing suffering, division and separation provides us with a vision of engaged action in the world in these difficult times.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Compassion has been called ‘the quivering of the heart in response to suffering.' Cultivating a compassionate heart helps us to hold kindly our own painful feelings and emotions, and engage with the suffering of others, near and far.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) An essential element of mindfulness practice is to cultivate a willingness to be with our experience just as it is. Consciously cultivating qualities of deep-rooted acceptance, kindness, and interest in our experience supports freeing our minds and opening our hearts.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The bodhisattva path involves a training of our hearts to abandon unskillful states and cultivate qualities of love, compassion, and forgiveness--and envision actions to transform the suffering of others and the world. In the Rwandan genocide and the triumph of freedom and democracy in South Africa we see the suffering that comes from cultivating fear and hatred, and the potential for freedom and peace that results from cultivating forgiveness, compassion, and love. These recent events remind us how much our actions matter, and invite us to become bodhisattvas, committed to the awakening and freedom of all beings.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When harmful or unhealthy habits form, they can cause us much suffering and they can be hard to change because they are carried out automatically and without conscious awareness. Mindfulness is a key to changing harmful or unwanted habits as it provides skillful methods and practices to bring them into the light of awareness. Three elements of mindfulness are particularly important in changing unhealthy or unwanted habits - Intention, Attention, and Attitude. The talk explores these three elements with a focus on Intention.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) What we accept we go beyond: when we bring a kind and non-judging awareness to our experience we align ourselves with the truth of how things are and open to liberating insights that lead to release from suffering.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The path to alleviating the suffering of the world leads through the gateway of meeting our own suffering with compassion. When we open fully to our own suffering, we transmute it into compassion and it can move through us into the world.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Guided meditation on loving-kindness with some discussion of the Brahma Viharas' Divine Abodes.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) A talk on the Third Noble Truth - the cessation of suffering - as part of a retreat on the four Noble Truths

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Using suffering as a gateway to ending suffering

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)