Guiding us along the path, Gil Fronsdal shows how to develop spirituality into enduring inner strengths rather than solitary experiences.

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In this episode, Gil Fronsdal teaches listeners about:

• Developing personal, inner strengths
• The tendency of meditators to over-value spiritual experiences
• Wisdom as one of our inner strengths
• The clarity of awakening and seeing the functions of our heart and mind
• How something arises and how something ceases
• What it means to be awake in the here and now
• Recognizing all of the times we are in the past or the future
• Shedding, letting go, and simplifying our experience
• Finding the path in the present moment
• Remaining composed and settling our entire being
• How the Buddhist path does not have a destination

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed

“The right attitude, the right intention, is to begin finding that way of being that simplifies our experience. One of the right intentions is the intention of letting go, of renunciation. You can’t take a lot of baggage with you, even good baggage, if you want to walk the path.” – Gil Fronsdal

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Exploring how to untangle the threads of intense desire, teacher Trudy Goodman offers direction on meeting the Dharma.

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This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Buddhist teacher Trudy Goodman discusses:

• Being incarnated into this desire-body
• Diversity within desire and being tuned into different frequencies
• The pressure to conform to expectations
• Difficulty in knowing our deepest desires and embodying them
• Being determined to do what we want
• Coming home to the true self which is underneath everything
• Heartbreak and obstacles to connection as a place of learning
• Developing our ability to be with intense sensation and maintaining awareness
• Leaning into the call of the dharma

This recording from the Big Bear Retreat Center was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

Learn more about Trudy’s offerings at trudygoodman.com

“This place of heartbreak, of the obstacles to love, connection, longing, relationship, this place is really the place that we learn how to hold this world of desire with a peaceful heart.” – Trudy Goodman

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Lama Tsultrim Allione shares the practice of feeding our demons in order to dissolve that which prevents us from being free.

In this episode from the 2023 Summer Mountain Retreat, Lama Tsultrim Allione shares:

• How she first discovered Buddhism and meditation
• The beauty within silence and quiet attention to our surroundings
• Lama Tsultrim’s first trip to India and studying the mystic east
• Her connection with Ram Dass and Maharaji’s early devotees
• The practice of feeding our demons (the parts of ourselves that drain us)
• Dissolving that which prevents us from being free
• Fighting our demons versus feeding our demons
• The demons of the fear of abandonment, depression, anxiety, and addiction
• Parts of ourselves that are trying to get attention
• The difference between the wants and needs of our demons
• A guided practice for listeners

About Lama Tsultrim Allione:

Lama Tsultrim Allione is the bestselling author of Women of Wisdom (1984), Feeding Your Demons (2008), and Wisdom Rising Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine (2018). Lama Tsultrim is the founder of Tara Mandala, a 700-acre retreat center with a three-story temple and library dedicated to the divine feminine in the Buddhist tradition near Pagosa Springs, in southwest Colorado. She leads a vibrant international community with over forty groups around the world.

Learn more about Lama Tsultrim Allione’s work at Tara Mandala

“I know that demons means a lot of different things in this country, in different cultural contexts. What I mean by it is the different parts of ourselves that drain us, that cause us to be not free. In fact, the word mara, which is the word for demon in Sanskrit, means that which blocks freedom.” – Lama Tsultrim Allione

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