Listen to Dharma Talks – Orlando Insight Meditation Group Peter Carlson

This talk provides a brief overview of traditional American holidays from Halloween through New Year’s Eve, from their origins centuries ago up to how current consumerism and social conflict has created a stressful and potentially damaging series of events during the Fall and early Winter periods.  The overview is followed by a review of a Buddhist “decision tree” process called “The Four Clear Comprehensions” that provides a way to integrate mindfulness and Right Effort to realize appropriate goals for gift giving that don’t disrupt the principles of Right Speech/Action/Livelihood.  The review is followed by a dialogue between Peter and a few of the participants to illustrate how this decision-making process works.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk, which includes a description of The Four Clear Comprehensions:  Giving Presence Over The Holidays

The talk for next week will provide a review of the basics of mindfulness practices.

Following a long-established custom, this meeting is focused on providing opportunities for those who attended the annual Deerhaven one-week residential retreat to review their experience.  Due to the occurrence of the meeting on Thanksgiving Eve, only 3 of the 14 who attended the retreat are present to talk of their experiences and insights.

Next week’s talk will focus on bring Buddhist principles and practices to the holiday season, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve.

This talk provides information about how to identify and set aside the five hindrances to concentrated and tranquil awareness, preparatory to developing the process of Awakening through the practice of vipassana, insight into the conditioned nature of the mind.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  Renouncing The Five Hindrances

Samadhi describes how the mind is unified during the process of Awakening, and this talk reviews the various stages of concentrated awareness that are cultivated.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  JHANA CULTIVATION-IS IT NECESSARY  and Samadhi Passadhi-Unifying a Distracted Mind

This talk describes a way that Buddhist psychology explains human personality formation as an aggregation of five factors in order to “deconstruct” the belief that there is an enduring/autonomous self.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  REVIEWING THE FIVE AGGREGATES

A core principle of Buddhist psychology is paticca samuppada, dependent origination.  During this talk, an alternative translation is offered–contingent provisional emergence–which incorporates contemporary scientific and psychological understandings of this important concept for understanding how karma forms and how it can be changed through diligent and mindful clear knowledge of what arises and passes away in consciousness.

Here are the notes prepared for this talk:  CONTINGENT PROVISIONAL EMERGENCE AND KARMA