Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center: dharma talks and meditation instruction

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Pt. 2 Hiri and Ottappa with Vedana (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral - neither one) a guided meditation

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) shame. fear of wrongdoing. clear knowing. reality. being protected and guided by the energies of shame and fear of wrongdoing. knowing the first (1st) and second (2nd) arrows.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) practicing to feel what neutral feels like in the body; how metta with / for / from a neutral being feels in the body. a spacious guided meditation.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) "giving. generosity. care. giver, receiver, gift. view, intention, action. beginning again as we enter into the flow and container of retreat. this is the opening talk for the retreat titled: Rooted in Presence: A Natural Path of Insight and Belonging"

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) This closing talk distills the sixteen steps of the Ānāpānasati Sutta into what's most portable for daily life — calming the body, calming the mind, opening the heart, and letting go — offered as one continuous gesture rather than four separate teachings. We'll explore simple, concrete tools for carrying retreat-mind into ordinary moments, and extend the practice into patience and sīla as it meets daily relationship and speech. The talk closes with reflections on love, belonging, and letting go: what becomes possible once the hands are finally empty enough to receive what is already here.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) In this guided meditation, the breath becomes a frame - a halo around whatever picture we slot into it - as we move through the third tetrad's four ways of looking at the mind. We'll settle into the stillness already underneath the mind's activity, the way silence sits beneath sound; let a basic gladness surface, an inward brightness already present rather than something we have to chase down; gather the mind into a felt sense of wholeness and integration; and finally practice the small, ordinary liberations already available to us - the fist opening, the self growing quieter, a way of looking that's already free.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Drawing on Bhikkhu Anālayo's scholarship on the Ānāpānasati Sutta, this talk explores the second tetrad of mindfulness of breathing: the four steps in which joy, happiness, and the subtler mental formations become doorways into deep practice. We look at why pleasure, met clearly, has always belonged on the path, and how the Buddha's own early memory of ease under a rose-apple tree pointed him toward awakening long before any formal practice did. Along the way we'll draw on the words of contemporary BIPOC and queer dharma teachers on what it means to actually receive joy in the body, and explore practical instructions for steeping in wholesome pleasure and calming it without losing it.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) This talk explores Samadhi as absorption and as momentary concentration

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Guided Metta for neutral being

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The instructions supports the mind to incline towards ease with breathing and wholehearted attention

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The talk describes the five hindrances and how to meet them in concentration practice by 1. gently ignoring, 2. bring in antidotes, 3. meeting with RAIN approach

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Instructions point to the importance of inviting a attitude of friendliness and patience in mindfulness of a breathing practice

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) In a society that prizes overachieving, we are taught to scale it back in meditation practice. But strong determination is also an essential quality on the path to awakening. Here's how to fold your ambition and perfectionism into your practice.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) In this talk, Aishah Shahidah Simmons explores the Buddha's teaching on the Five Hindrances — Sensual Desire, Ill Will, Sloth and Torpor, Restlessness and Worry, and Doubt — drawing on the Saṅgārava Sutta's water similes, the lineage of Sayagyi U Bha Kin through Rev. Dr. Leon E. Wright, and the words of Toni Cade Bambara and Audre Lorde. Offered through a BIPOC lens on Juneteenth, this teaching invites recognizing the hindrances with tenderness, not self-judgment, as a lifetime's practice toward liberation.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Much appreciation to Sayadaw U Vivekananda that offered a short teaching on the last morning of the Two-week retreat at IMS.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Includes instructions on 6-Part walking meditation at the end.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) An exploration of the First Establishment of Mindfulness

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Morning instructions

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Morning instructions

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Meditation on friendliness and kindness

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Morning instructions

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) This talk explores how mettā and the brahmaviharās are both means and ends on the path to liberation — the very ground that allows insight to arise, and the natural expression of the freedom that results.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Guided meditation metta body scan and QA

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Joy is not a break from meeting the world's pain — it's what makes it possible to keep meeting it. An exploration of mudita, appreciative joy, and the many ways the heart can learn to rejoice.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) What does it mean to let suffering touch you without being consumed by it? This talk traces a path from empathy through grief to the inexhaustible compassion of the bodhisattva — and offers practical steps for cultivating it from the inside out.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Receiving care meditation and QA

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Introducing metta practice

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) What matters is what we cultivate, how we care and how we respond

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(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) a dharmette and guided sit on opening the heart toward those who are difficult to hold.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) 15 minute intro and guided sit

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) An exploration of the First Establishment of Mindfulness

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) 15 minute intro and guided sit

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflections on the Paramis of Effort and Patience. References the Sona Sutta (AN 6.55) and Upanisa Sutta (SN 12.23) Vimalakirti and the Awakened Heart by Joan Sutherland and Ann Carolyn Klein's story In The Hidden Lamp: Stories From 25 Centuries of Awakened Women.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Metta-Infused body scan using the poem 'St Francis and the Sow' by Galway Kinnell as inspiration.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflections on the Paramis (Particularly Dana and Sila) as essential capacities for awakening as well as relating skillfully to oneself and thw world (AKA 'This Life') This talk references the song 'Go Easy Kid" by Monica Martin, Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit and Am I Helping, Fixing or Serving? by Rachel Naomi Remen

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Evening chanting of the Suffusion of the Brahmaviharas followed by toning with Sabra on the shruti box

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Grief introductory reflections on mudita are offered followed by a guided meditation using phrases to cultivate mudita.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Working with impermanence

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Mindfulness isn't about pretending to be peaceful, it's about being real. Don't be afraid to be completely yourself. You are good and the world is waiting for you to stop believing otherwise.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) A meditation on finding comfort in the simple goodness of this moment, followed by a talk about feeling alone with the task of being ok in the world, followed by a meditation to locate the comfort and care that reassures us that it's safe to let go.

(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Day 1 sitting instructions. Very short practice suitable for beginners emphasizing relaxed relationship to the objects of attention, balanced attitude, and how to set appropriate expectatioins about unintentional thinking during meditation.