PODCAST · religion
Wise Caregiving
by Wise Caregiving
Dharma talks presented by Wise Caregiving teachers Jonathan Prescott, Michael Melancon, and Karla Johnston.
Episodes
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Understanding the Path of Practice
Jonathan Prescott invites us to receive the gifts left to us by our ancestors. One of those gifts is the story of the Dharmakaya Boat: A story that shows us the path of Buddhist practice. In telling this story, Jonathan encourages us to see that this isn't a story about someone else, somewhere...
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Making Friends with Change
In this talk, Jonathan examines the roots of our desire for certainty and how Zen practice can help us respond peacefully to uncertainty and change. Jonathan describes how a human brain that is wired to predict the future is at odds with our ever-changing world. He suggests how Zen practice can...
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Travel as a Spiritual Practice
How do we travel without adding to our planet's over-tourism burden? Jonathan Prescott shares insights from his recent month-long European walkabout. He shows how contemplative practice can make travel more meaningful for the traveler, as well as make us less of a burden on the places, people…
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Right Diligence
Jonathan Prescott offers a 4-step method for practicing Right Diligence. This talk caps The Anacortes Mindfulness Community's practice period, celebrating everyone's diligent efforts and inviting the Sangha to balance that effort with enjoyment and ease. The handout can be downloaded here:...
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The Joy of Silence
Learning to rest in the arms of silence is a foundation for joyful living. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott helps you understand outer silence, inner silence, and the practice of silence. Knowing that silence can sometimes bring forward parts of ourselves we don't initially welcome, Jonathan shows...
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Waking Up Together
Michael Daiun Melancon shows how practice forms create a field of happiness that supports personal and collective awakening. He encourages the Morning Light Sangha to cultivate awareness by using silence, bowing, Dharma Sharing, and more. Enjoy your tea!
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Four Layers of Gratitude
Jonathan Prescott talks about practicing deep gratitude during his visit to the Guemes Island Community Church. He uses Zen stories to show how we can be grateful not only for getting what we want, but also for noticing the unnoticed, and for getting what we don't want. The deepest layer of...
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Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
Jonathan Prescott provides context for the Anacortes Mindfulness Community's deep dive into Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. He offers historical background about the Buddha's life and teachings, and show us how the heart of these teachings arise not only from the...
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Living a Contemplative Life
Jonathan Prescott shows what it takes to live a contemplative life - a life more concerned with finding the Divine in the present moment than with satisfying our self-centered desires. He describes how the contemplative life brings joy, and contrasts it with the hollow pursuits of a conventional...
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Cherishing Your Ingredients
Drawing from life stories, Buddhist teachings, and lessons from Plum Village, Karla Johnston explores how to respond skillfully to suffering by first recognizing the unique ingredients of our own lives and then examining the lens—historical or Ultimate—through which we view the world. Karla...
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What Do I Do Now
Michael Melancon encourages us to embrace each moment as an opportunity to awaken and engage intentionally with life, highlighting the importance of mindful awareness of breath, heartbeat, and our relationships. Through personal stories and practical advice, Michael asks the guiding question…
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Meeting Thoughts and Emotions with Kindness
Jonathan Prescott shows how mindful awareness of mental “seeds”—habits, emotions, and thoughts—can help practitioners move beyond reactive patterns toward insight and wisdom. Using the model of store consciousness and mind consciousness, Jonathan explains how seeds can proliferate and fill our...
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True Self and Small Self in Harmony
Jonathan Prescott explores the distinction in Zen between the “small self”—our ego and personality—and the “True Self,” the universal, undivided wisdom and goodness inherent in us all. Through personal stories and Zen metaphors, Jonathan illustrates how spiritual practice is not about eradicating...
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Grace
To live with grace means to flow freely with life. In this talk offered to The Guemes Island Community Church, Jonathan Prescott explores how Christianity tells the story of grace while Zen teaches the path to grace.
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The Joy of Contemplative Practice
Jonathan Prescott explores how you can use contemplative practices to make your life more joyful. He shares his life-long contemplative practice techniques and encourages you to find ways to transform everyday activities into opportunities for deepening.
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Finding Peace in Difficult Times
Many people around the world are suffering due to the actions of America's current President. Join Jonathan Prescott to explore how to find peace even in these difficult times. He helps us connect with the deep listening and skillful responses modeled by Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhistattva of...
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Zen of Imperfection
Karla Johnston shares about how Zen practice supports us in using "imperfections" as gateways to increased awareness. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are expanded upon as tools for embracing an authentic life along with poetry, song and a brief guided "Imperfection" practice.
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True Self and Small Self as Lovers
Jonathan Prescott explores how the Buddha's enlightenment story offers a map for creating a loving relationship between our ego and our awakened nature. This talk was offered to the Morning Light Sangha during a Day of Mindfulness.
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Finding Peace When You Don't Feel Peaceful
The US election knocked many people off balance and caused them to grieve. Jonathan Prescott shows how to practice equanimity and wise grieving to help people find peace within, even during difficult times.
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Hold the Form and the Form Holds You
Michael Melancon uncovers the subtleties of our Zen practice forms so that we can be held in their wisdom. This talk was offered to the Morning Light Sangha. Enjoy!
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Nurturing Delight
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: 'It's not this moment that makes you happy. It's you who makes this moment happy.' But how do we do that? Jonathan Prescott points the way in this Dharma talk called Nurturing Delight. He shows us how to practice deeply so that delight is present even when things aren't to...
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React or Respond?
Jonathan Prescott shows the benefits of responding with love rather than reacting with fear. This talk was offered to the Guemes Island Community Church on July 21, 2024
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Making Peace With Your Life
Do the conditions of your life cause you to suffer? Even when those conditions are favorable? If so, welcome to being human! In this talk, Jonathan Prescott shares a 3-step method for finding peace within yourself, even when your life is not ideal. This talk was offered during the Morning Light...
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Contemplative Practice
In this talk delivered the the Guemes Island Community Church, Jonathan Prescott explains what a contemplative practice is and how to open the 3 Contemplative Doors. He finishes with a Metta practice to help us feel the practice in our hearts and bodies.
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How To Transform
Buddhism has so many elements that it's hard to know how to use them effectively. Jonathan Prescott shows you how to focus your efforts by opening the 3 Doors of Practice.
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Cleaning Your Heart
Jonathan Prescott offers a 3-step process for spring-cleaning our hearts so that we can restore relationships that have soured over the long pandemic winter. This talk was offered to the Guemes Island Community Church
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A Buddhist View of Communion
The Buddha taught that ignorance is the root of suffering. To ignore means to turn away from the truth. While speaking to the Guemes Island Community Church, Jonathan Prescott shows how Buddhism and Christianity both point towards overcoming ignorance through awareness and love.
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Hospitality
Jonathan Prescott offered this exploration of hospitality to the Guemes Island Community Church. Jonathan uses poems and stories to reveal deeper aspects of hospitality, including the call to welcome those we don't agree with.
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Zen Simplified
In Jonathan Prescott's final talk to the Anacortes Mindfulness Community, he offers a concise map of Zen practice, beginning with the establishment of happiness and ending with the depth of Zazen.
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Grab An Ordinary Life
13 centuries ago, Zen Master Deshan encouraged us to grab the life of an ordinary person. What did he mean? Jonathan Prescott shows how our ordinary lives can be our awakened lives. We just need to stop.
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Practicing With Grief
In this talk, Jonathan Prescott helps us understand and feel our grief. He describes common types of grief and offers ways to practice so that we can transform our losses into compassion.
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The Price Of Awakening
Deep within all of us is a golden Buddha. It's been there all along, radiating goodness and wisdom. But because we feel vulnerable in this challenging world, we've covered this precious gift with a 'self' that traps us in a cycle of suffering. Join Jonathan Prescott for an exploration of our own...
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Suffering Is The Key To Liberation
Suffering and liberation are intimately bound together on a continuum of interbeing, intersection, and interpenetration. Liberation is the birthright of our Buddha nature, available to us in every moment. Shining the light within we touch our original nature. Therein lies the liberation we seek....
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Compassionate Trauma Informed Practice
We often come to meditation practice with an aspiration to alleviate and transform our pain. Yet for many, sitting in silence with awareness of the breath may actually be quite stimulating rather than calming. In this talk, Monica Kingsbury will explore how Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness helps us...
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The War Inside Us
We all suffer. And we suffer because we create a war between how things are and how we want them to be. Jonathan Prescott shares the story of his own suffering and how the Buddha's example inspired him to end the war with his life. This is the first talk given by Jonathan Prescott at Radiant…
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Take Down Your Wall
In an effort to protect ourselves, we wall ourselves off. But this very wall becomes the source of our suffering. In this talk from Radiant Light Zen's Interbeing of Suffering and Liberation retreat, Jonathan Prescott offers practices to liberate us and shows how love and surrender are powerful...
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Set Your Heart On Freedom
We’re not alone in our suffering and are not the first to yearn for liberation. Discover a Zen elder who teaches us how to work with suffering as a path to freedom. This talk was offered by Karla Johnston during Radiant Light Zen's Suffering and Liberation Retreat, October 12, 2023. Sources:...
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Practicing The Precepts
Jonathan Prescott describes how the precepts arose from the Buddha's awakened mind. All these centuries later, the precepts still call us home to our own awakened minds.
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Meet Life With Love
We spend our lives looking for love. But love has been in our hearts all along. Join Jonathan Prescott as he explores how you can feel the joy of meeting life with love.
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Stardust
In this talk, Tim Motley takes a closer look at the true nature of our existence. We walk this path, each of us a collection of mostly empty atomic particles, pulsed out of a quasar, condensed into this time and space, with the extraordinarily rare opportunity to embrace life and consciousness…
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Flowers Beneath Snow
Karla Johnston shares lessons of Spring in 50+ feet of Tahoe mega-snow: active patience and acceptance. Two questions are provided to deepen our practice.
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MLS 3rd Anniversary Celebration
Morning Light Sangha celebrates its 3rd anniversary. Join us as Jonathan Prescott shares MLS history, Michael Melancon describes our Zoomdo practice form, and the Sangha offers words about what MLS means in their lives.
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Taking Refuge in Zen
Jonathan Prescott describes our Zen practice forms and how we use them to unearth the freedom that lies just beneath our veneer of suffering.
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Generosity
In this Dharma talk, Jonathan Prescott investigates generosity: How we begin by practicing generosity towards ourselves, then experiment with giving what we can while refraining from taking what isn’t offered. These practices show us our self-centered contractions and help us transform them into...
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The Fundamental Point - Michael Melancon
The point of all Dharma Teachings is that we can awaken and that such awakening is our birthright . . . . right here. right now. But how do we self-actualize our Buddha Nature?
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Sutra History
The Buddhist Sutras are gems offered by our spiritual ancestors. This talk explores the origins of Sutras from the Theravada and Mahayana traditions and how we can use them to wake up.
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Zen Calm For Holdiay Chaos
Ram Dass once said: "If you think you’re enlightened, try spending a week with your family." In this week’s Dharma talk, Jonathan Prescott explores how Zen can help you smile to troublesome Uncle Ned and enjoy your sister’s dry fruitcake. Happy Holidays!
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Embracing Our Shadow Buddhas
Bright Buddhas show us how to be free. Shadow Buddhas show us how to suffer. In this talk, Jonathan Prescott offers a 3-step practice to help us embrace our Shadow Buddhas and turn them into transformative teachers.
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Listening With Love Retreat - Practice Introduction
On the first evening of the Listening with Love Retreat, Jonathan Prescott introduces sitting, walking, and eating meditation.
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Listening With Love Retreat - Silence
In this second talk from the Listening with Love Retreat, Jonathan Prescott invites us into the joys of silence.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Dharma talks presented by Wise Caregiving teachers Jonathan Prescott, Michael Melancon, and Karla Johnston.
HOSTED BY
Wise Caregiving
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Wise Caregiving have?
Wise Caregiving currently has 122 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Wise Caregiving about?
Dharma talks presented by Wise Caregiving teachers Jonathan Prescott, Michael Melancon, and Karla Johnston.
How often does Wise Caregiving release new episodes?
Wise Caregiving publishes regularly with 122 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Wise Caregiving?
You can listen to Wise Caregiving on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Wise Caregiving?
Wise Caregiving is created and hosted by Wise Caregiving.
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