These two talks explore how we leave our bodies, the challenge of working with pain, the pathway home to embodied awareness, and the gifts of presence and aliveness.

These two talks explore how we leave our bodies, the challenge of working with pain, the pathway home to embodied awareness, and the gifts of presence and aliveness.

This talk and question/answer format addresses the attitudes and practices that cultivate our natural wisdom and compassion.

We suffer when our words or actions arise from unconscious wants and fears. This talk explores how we can awaken from the habitual ways we cause harm to ourselves and others, and live from our natural intelligence and tender warmth.

Guided meditation on loving-kindness with some discussion of the Brahma Viharas' Divine Abodes.

When we don't trust who we are, we are unable to be at home in our world. This talk explores how we come to be at war with ourselves and the pathway to realizing our basic goodness.

This talk explores a Tibetan teaching through reflection and guided meditations: Our true nature--our inherent wakefuness, openness and love--is closer than we can imagine; it is more profound than we can imagine; it is easier than we can imagine; and it is more wondrous than we can imagine.

Our capacity to listen deeply--to our inner life and each other--is the grounds of true understanding and love. This talk explores the challenges to listening and guidelines and practices that awaken a listening heart.

Spiritual awakening often involves offering a healing presence to the suffering of post traumatic stress or deep emotional wounding. This talk explores the three key elements that support this process: self-forgiveness, accessing a source of love and safety, and bringing a kind attention to the unlived life in the body.

While we are conditioned to become identified with limited sense of self, we have the capacity to recognize and open to who we are beyond the self. This talk investigates our most compelling domains of getting identified, and the ways a purposeful presence can awaken us.

We become homesick when our insecurity compels us to find refuge in exclusive affiliations, in over-consuming, in avoiding intimacy or grasping tightly to the approval of others. This talk explores how we come home to the truth of who we are by connecting with our moment to moment experience, and by developing the capacity to be wakeful, giving and receptive in loving relationship.

The Buddha taught that mindfulness of the body is a direct path to the realization of truth, to peace and freedom. This talk explores how we leave a present-centered awareness of our body, and the pathways of homecoming.

While desire is intrinsic to life, it can contract into the craving that traps us in suffering. This talk explores how we seek happiness yet become habituated to false refuges--substitutes like over- consuming food, dependent relationships, approval, achieving--that can never bring happiness. Our freedom becomes possible when we forgive the ways we get hooked, and offer a deep, mindful attention to the energies of craving and clinging.

The Buddha taught that becoming identified with "wanting mind" obscures our true nature and binds us in suffering. This talk explores a wise attitude in relating to desire, and offers three pathways towards freedom: Mindfulness of "wanting mind," trancing back desire to its source, and radical non-clinging.

Relating Wisely with Fear Part 1 and 2 - While fear is essential to survival, it can also strangle our capacity to live fully and awaken spiritually. These two talks explore how fear takes over our lives, and the ways we can train our attention to free ourselves from its grip.

Relating Wisely with Fear Part 1 and 2 - While fear is essential to survival, it can also strangle our capacity to live fully and awaken spiritually. These two talks explore how fear takes over our lives, and the ways we can train our attention to free ourselves from its grip.

When we experience others through a conditioned lens of wants and fears, and of unexamined beliefs, we react in ways that cause distance and sometimes obvious injury. This talk explores how we create separation from others, and the ways we can awaken from this trance and live from genuine empathy and wisdom.

We all encounter the great losses of our own health and life, and of cherished others. We are conditioned to resist opening to the rawness and grief that comes with loss. This talk describes the refuge of presence in the face of loss, and the gift of timeless love that arises as we make peace with the reality of this living, dying world.

The Buddha taught that "Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind." This talk explores how our intention and attention can tap into the living awareness that is our source, and give rise to healing of body, heart and spirit.

For many of us, the most apparent junctures of spiritual transformation are spurred on by challenging life situations. This talk looks at how our conscious aspiration for awakening, and our practice of mindful presence, can help us find peace, compassion and freedom when difficulties arise.

If we investigate, we will find that much suffering arises out of mistrust--of ourselves, others and life. This talk explores the genesis of the great challenges of doubt and mistrust, and the pathway to trusting the goodness that is our essence.

Holding ourselves with a compassionate, forgiving heart is the gateway to healing, and to intimacy with our world. This talk explores our deep conditioning to be at war with ourselves, and the insights and elements of forgiving that can carry us home to loving presence.

The roots of peace and war are within these very hearts. In the moments that we release blame, we reconnect with the compassionate presence that heals ourselves and others as well. This talk includes a meditation that guides us in awakening our capacity to forgive.

This talk explores what gets in the way of loving presence and the training that awakens and frees our hearts.

Our capacity to respond to ourselves and our world with compassion is the essence of all healing and spiritual awakening. This talk explores the trance of separation that blocks our natural compassion, and includes guided practices that enable us to directly cultivate a compassionate heart.

Joy is an innate capacity, one of the primary expressions of an awakened heart and mind. Yet because of our conditioned patterns of thought and emotion, this capacity for openness, happiness and full aliveness can be obscured. This talk guides us in how to nurture joy through a commited presence that unfolds into "loving what is."

Cultivating equanimity means awakening our capacity to meet the winds of life with a non-reactive, open, balanced presence. The gift of this presence is that we can see clearly what is happening within and around us, and respond with wisdom, creativity and compassion. This talk looks at our habits of reacting, and the ways we can come home to equinimity in the midst of life's challenges.

We are conditioned to live in stories that obscure the vastness, goodness and mystery of what we are. This talk explores the ways we construct a limited self-identity and the pathways to realizing and living from a fullness of our Being.

We each have a deep interest in reality--in understanding what is true and who we are. In Buddhist teachings, our interest, and its expression in wise investigation, energize the path of awakening. This talk explores how mindful investigation can free us from emotional suffering, nourish loving relatedness and create the conditions for deep spiritual realization.

How is it possible that we humans have wreaked such havoc on this planet, on the web of life that we belong to? This talk explores the ways that egoic consciousness can lead to violating life, and how evolving consciousness can move us toward healing this earth.

The first session defines meditation and describes the Buddhist teachings that give a context to the path of practice. We explore the two basic types of meditation--concentration and mindfulness--and then focus on the ground of mindfulness training: bringing mindful attention to the breath and bodily sensations. Guided meditations include setting intention and the sacred pause; learning to "come back" using an anchor of the breath; and "being here" with an embodied presence.

Our conditioning is to live in a reactive trance of either resisting or become possessed by strong emotions. This reactivity fuels a trance of being separate from others, and feeling defective and insecure. In this class we explore how to free ourselves from this suffering by bringing a mindful and kind awareness to the stories and feelings that make up our emotional life.

The primary element in meditation is training to awaken from the trance of thoughts. This class explores two key ways that mindfulness supports this awakening. The first is using wise reflection to discern if thoughts are imprisoning us in fear or serving healing and freedom. The second is recognizing when we are in the virtual reality of thinking, and learning to "come back" to living presence. It is by inhabiting this non-conceptual presence that we have access to the love, wisdom and freedom that we cherish.

Our human potential is to express the wings of presence--mindfulness and lovingkindness--through all facets of daiy living. This talk explores the practices that enable us to both serve and savor this precious life.

We all have conditioned patterns of thinking and behaving that keep us identified as a separate, deficient self. This talk investigates the roots of this conditioning and ways that pausing and awakening mindfulness can free us to live from our inherent love and wisdom.

Cultivating the capacity for listening is essential to loving well and to realizing the truth of who we are. This talk focuses on three key facets of deep listening--non-distractedness, not-controlling and seeking to understand-- that can awaken an intimacy with our inner life and others. Guided meditations on listening precede and are included within the body of the talk.

Love is innate, and blossoms as we intentionally cultivate it. This talk on two natural expressions of loving life--gratitude and generosity--includes several guided reflections that awaken the heart.

Prayer, when cultivated consciously, energizes and guides us on the spiritual path. This talk investigates the difference between wanting, with it's narrow fixation, and the prayer that arises out of our deep heart's longing. We explore how living prayer, the prayer that arises from consciously inhabiting longing, can carry us home to loving presence. As John O'Donahue writes, prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging.

The source of our suffering is that we become identified with egoic roles and defenses that separate us from the truth of what we are. This talk explores some of the constricting identities that we take on, and the process of compassionate presence that reconnects us with our natural vitality, openheartedness and wisdom. We then enlarge our focus to seeing past the veil that obscures the sacred presence that shines through all beings.

This talk invites a contemplation of three archetypal domains of spiritual awakening: Buddha-awareness, Dharma- truth (the way things are), and Sangha-loving relatedness. We explore our habit of turning toward false refuges, and the way we can find refuge in that which truely heals our hearts and frees our mind. The evening ends with a living ritual of dedicating ourselves to each of these three gateways to awakening.

The flag of trance is identifying as a separate, deficient self. This talk explores how developmentally we can get fixated on fears and unmet needs and cut off from the wholeness of Being that is our true nature. We explore the power of mindfulness --seeking not to change but to understand--and the expression of that understanding as love. The talk includes guided reflections that can help us recognize and awaken from the confines of trance.

One of the most illuminating themes in the Buddha's life story was the regular appearance of Mara--god of selfishness and greed, anger and fear, doubt and shame. Each time Mara surfaced, the Buddha's response was to say "I see you Mara," and invite him to tea. This talk explores how such unconditional friendliness and wisdom can bring healing and freedom to our lives.

Our longing is to realize and embody loving presence, yet we each have deeply conditioned habits that bind our hearts. This talk reflects on these habits, and explores how we can free ourselves by bringing a mindful, compassionate attention to places where we are most trapped in feeling separate, fearful and unworthy.

Our longing is to realize and embody loving presence, yet we each have deeply conditioned habits that bind our hearts. This talk reflects on these habits, and explores how we can free ourselves by bringing a mindful, compassionate attention to places where we are most trapped in feeling separate, fearful and unworthy.

It's part of our make up to get lost in the trance of thinking-- to believe our thoughts to be real and to live in the story of a separate, endangered self. It is also our capacity to recognize our trance and choose presence. This talk explores how the practice of pausing and arriving in the aliveness of our senses opens us to our natural compassion and wisdom, and enables us to experience the great mystery we are part of.

Given the universal truth that these bodies get sick and they die, what allows us to find freedom, happiness and peace in the midst? This talk explores how, when we get caught in the suffering that arises from physical sickness, we can take refuge in presence and love.

When caught in emotional suffering, we sense that we are living from a reactive, contracted place, and don't trust or like ourselves. This talk explores the severed belonging that is the genesis of that doubt, and the two wings of mindful presence and love that carry us home to our natural wholeness and goodness of Being.

Only by opening our hearts to change and loss can we live and love fully. Yet much of our life is organized around finding ground-- avoiding the insecurity of change, loss and death. This talk explores how our ways of grasping and resisting remove us from the spontaneity and aliveness, the love and wisdom, that is our human potential.

Learning to hold our own lives with a gentle compassion is a key element in all emotional healing and spiritual awakening. This two part series explores the suffering of being at war with ourselves and the pathway to freeing our hearts. Music at end is Libby Roderick, "How Could Anyone?"

Learning to hold our own lives with a gentle compassion is a key element in all emotional healing and spiritual awakening. This two part series explores the suffering of being at war with ourselves and the pathway to freeing our hearts. Music at end is Libby Roderick, "How Could Anyone?"

The Buddha considered investigation to be a crucial capacity on the spiritual path. This talk explores how interest and wise inquiry serve emotional healing, intimacy with others and revealing the truth that sets us free.

Buddhist psychology and the Western oriented field of positive psychology agree: How we pay attention determines whether we live primarily in fear and judgment, or happiness and peace. This two part series explores the teachings, practices and attitudes that enable us to live a meaningful life with a heart that is "happy for no reason."

Buddhist psychology and the Western oriented field of positive psychology agree: How we pay attention determines whether we live primarily in fear and judgment, or happiness and peace. This two part series explores the teachings, practices and attitudes that enable us to live a meaningful life with a heart that is "happy for no reason."

One expression of our suffering is homelessness--feeling cut off from the presence and aliveness that is our source. This talk explores the existential and cultural forces that foster disconnection from our physical and energetic being, the practices that enable us to embrace our unlived life and the gifts of homecoming.

The habit of self-judgment not only causes emotional pain, it creates a trance that obscures the purity and vastness of our Being. This talk explores how a wakeful and forgiving heart can heal and free us. (Retreat Talk)

In this telling of the Buddha's story, we find archetypes that reveal a universal path of awakening and freedom. We explore how each of us has the potential to realize the loving and radiant awareness that is our source.

We spend much of our life on our way somewhere else, driven by the sense that something is missing or wrong. This talk explores the suffering that arises from our addiction to busyness and "doing," and the healing, loving and wisdom that arise when we take refuge in presence.

When we are suffering from stress, we are paying attention to our world in a narrow and rigid way. Through meditations that cultivate a wakeful and open attention, we can dramatically transform the feelings of anxiety and aloneness that underlie all stress.

When we are suffering from stress, we are paying attention to our world in a narrow and rigid way. Through meditations that cultivate a wakeful and open attention, we can dramatically transform the feelings of anxiety and aloneness that underlie all stress.

Deep listening is an essential ingredient in intimate, caring relationships. This talk reflects on the intentionality, presence and quest for understanding that create the grounds for a healing and loving listening attention.

We each long to be true to ourselves--to live from the love, creativity and wisdom that is our essence. This talk explores how, by attending to three key domains, we train ourselves to see beyond ego conditioning. By deepening our attention, we can free ourselves and others to be who we truly are.

In the moments we feel threatened, hurt or dissatisfied, we often flip into controlling mode--our body, heart and mind become contracted and we disconnect from presence. This talk explores how we can shift from controlling, to an empowering presence. When we do, our deepest wisdom and compassion begin to shape and guide our life.

Are you aware of the intentions that are shaping your thoughts, moods and life experience? This talk explores how mindfulness of intention allows us to open to our deepest heart's aspiration, and have that guide the unfolding of our lives.

In the moments when we are truly happy, there is a sense of both aliveness and presence. This talk reflects on three key ways we remove ourselves from living presence; and offers guided reflections that can re-open us into the flow.

The Buddha taught that we suffer because we don't realize who we are. This talk explores two pathways of awakening from the insecurity and reactivity that arises from a narrow sense of self. Listeners are invited to investigate the nature of awareness through several guided reflections.

Everything we cherish--love, creativity, wisdom, aliveness-- arises out of our capacity to arrive in Beingness. This talk explores the stress that leads us to cut off from our natural state of being, and two key pathways home. Included are guided meditations that explore the nature of our awareness, the essence of who we are.

When life doesn't go our way, we often launch into a chain reaction of obsessive thinking, blaming and unpleasant emotions. This talk explores how we can use meditative practices to step out of reactive patterns and respond to life's challenges from our naturally wise heart.

Without desire, this world would not exist. While this universal energy is entirely natural, if we are not mindful of it, desire can become a narrowed fixation or addiction that creates deep suffering. This talk explores the ways we can pay attention that honor this energy without allowing it to cut us off from presence and possess us

What stops us from being wholehearted in our relationships and life? This talk explores the conditioning that keeps us from an engaged presence, and the key elements to manifesting heart and spirit in all that we do

Whether you face chronic anxiety or more violent storms of fear and anger, you can cultivate the wings of freedom--the mindfulness and compassion--that free you. This talk explores how the habit of being reactive causes us suffering and the ways these tools of meditation can be applied to the inner weather systems that most challenge us.

Learning to bring a mindful presence to fear is an intrinsic part of spiritual awakening. In this talk we look at the ways we get caught in the trance of fear, and how the two wings of presence--clear recognition and openheartedness--can free us. This process of facing unmet fears is necessary not only for our own healing, but for any possibility of peace and the healing of our planet.

These two classes cover the basic instructions for Buddhist mindfulness (vipassana or insight) meditation. The first class explores the attitude we bring to meditation that makes it rewarding, and the training that helps us in "coming back" from thoughts. The second class guides us in "being here," in cultivating a mindful awareness that recognizes and accepts what is happening in the present moment. Both classes include guided meditations and valuable reminders that can support you in developing a rich meditation practice.

These two classes cover the basic instructions for Buddhist mindfulness (vipassana or insight) meditation. The first class explores the attitude we bring to meditation that makes it rewarding, and the training that helps us in "coming back" from thoughts. The second class guides us in "being here," in cultivating a mindful awareness that recognizes and accepts what is happening in the present moment. Both classes include guided meditations and valuable reminders that can support you in developing a rich meditation practice.

The mindstates behind violence--anger and fear--are universal and natural. If they possess us and drive our actions, we suffer. If we learn to meet them with a mindful awareness--if we step out of judgment and angry reactivity--we serve our own freedom and the possibility of peace on earth as well.

Love is the most basic expression of who we are, and yet it is often obscured by the trance of separation and fear. This talk explores how we habitually armor our hearts, and the training of attention that awakens us to unconditional, all inclusive love. A classic form of the metta (lovingkindness) meditation is part of the talk.

We cultivate compassion by letting ourselves be touched by the suffering within and around us. Because our conditioning is to avoid vulnerability, the path of compassion requires courage and purposefulness. As we awaken to the truth of our connectedness, our hearts become increasingly tender and our actions serve the healing of our world.

Joy is an innate capacity, an expression of unconditional presence with life. Yet for many, it is blocked by our conditioning to grasp after life and to defend against loss. This talk explores how we can develop the selfless presence that allows for joy, and nourish that joy so it blossoms in our life.

Equanimity is the mental state of balance and non-reactivity that arises when we are resting in open, wakeful presence. This talk reviews the key pathways to equanimity in the face of difficulty. We also explore the blessing of equanimity: the freedom to respond to our life with wisdom, compassion and love. (video available)

The perception of "there's not enough time or space" in life blocks our natural capacity for intimacy, creativity and wisdom. Pausing and connecting with the space of presence transforms our entire experience of being alive. This talk explores the pathways that reveal the space that is always here, the awake and loving space of our own awareness. (video available)

Deception, gossip and aggressive speech are pervasive in our culture. This talk looks at the roots of these forms of communication, and the way they entrap us in a contracted and separate sense of self. We then explore the practices that help us speak from a courageous presence, wisdom and love. (video available)

When we are filled with gratitude, we are living from the most sincere, awake part of our being. This talk explores three pathways of practice that open us to serving and savoring this life.

Our habit is to think we are on our way someplace else, and that our happiness is to be found outside ourselves. Yet realization becomes possible when we take the backward step into the formless dimension of our own being. This talk explores the two pathways that awaken us from our stories of self and reveal the love and awareness that is our true nature. (video available)

When we become emotionally reactive in our relationships, we often go into a trance that creates separation and locks us into a narrow sense of self. This talk explores how, by pausing and deepening our attention, we can reconnect with the wisdom of our hearts. (video available)

Our attitude in the face of life's challenges determines our suffering or our freedom. This solstice talk explores the light of compassion that blossoms when we honor our difficult times with a deep, mindful attention. This solstice evening includes chanting, singing and a candlelighting ceremony. (see video - show tracks)

La performs three dharma spoof songs for the 2011 IMCW Solstice Celebration. The first - "Waking Up is Hard to Do" - is about the delusion that suffering is easier than the effort it takes to wake up. The second - "Let it go, Let it go, Let it go" (written by Maureen Brady of the Snowflower Sangha in Madison, WI) - is about the practice of holiday equanimity. And the third - "My Mind's Prison Blues" - is a summary of the dharma and practice in the spirit of Johnny Cash. (Lyrics for 1st and 3rd songs by La Sarmiento).

This class explores the three classic gateways to true refuge - Buddha (awareness); Dharma (path, truth of reality) and Sangha (spiritual friends, loving relatedness). It includes reflections and a ceremony that supports us in remembering the pathway home. (also in video - show tracks)

Einstein says the most important question we will ever ask ourselves is, "Is this universe a friendly place?" Do we trust that there is something essentially benevolent or good about this universe? That we are essentially good? These two talks explore what it means to trust basic goodness, and how this trust naturally emerges through cultivating a meditative presence. (also in video - show tracks)

Einstein says the most important question we will ever ask ourselves is, "Is this universe a friendly place?" Do we trust that there is something essentially benevolent or good about this universe? That we are essentially good? These two talks explore what it means to trust basic goodness, and how this trust naturally emerges through cultivating a meditative presence. (also in video - show tracks)

Drawing on a wonderful teaching story from the Upanishads, these two talks explore the role of forgiveness, inner fire and looking at our own minds, in finding freedom.

Drawing on a wonderful teaching story from the Upanishads, these two talks explore the role of forgiveness, inner fire and looking at our own minds, in finding freedom.

We often move through the day in a reactive trance, removed from the aliveness of our bodies and this natural world. This talk explores how coming home to our bodies awakens us to living love, creativity and the deepest realization of who we are.

We suffer when we forget who we are and get caught in a limited sense of self. This talk explores how we become identified with a sliver of what we are, and the pathway to remembering our wholeness. When we know we're the ocean, we are free to relate to the waves with respect, compassion and love.

This line from poet Galway Kinnell reminds us of the possibility of meeting our inner life with a loving, healing presence. When we do, we loosen the trance of unworthiness and reconnect with our intrinsic goodness. In turn, we can offer our blessings to others--serving as reminders of the awareness and love that can blossom in all beings.

The ground of wise effort is our sincere intentionality toward presence, love and freedom. Yet our habit is to go into trance, and latch on to narrowed intentions of self-enhancement or defense. When this goes on for years, we feel disappointment in our lives, a sense of not being true to ourselves. Through guided reflections, we explore how--in spiritual practice and in relationships--we can connect with our deepest intention and live in a way that expresses our awakening heart and awareness.

Our fear management strategies--versions of fight/flight-- contract our body and mind, and separate us from others. As we learn to pause and contact the bodily fear with a gentle, mindful awareness, our sense of being enlarges. We rediscover our belonging to presence, love and life.

Most of us have core fear beliefs that obscure our true nature and bind us in repeating patterns of painful emotions and behavior. This talk looks at the beliefs that limit us and the freedom that is possible when we investigate them with a kind, mindful awareness.

Some contemporary evolutionary theories track our development from survival of the fittest to group selection whereby we have the capacity for cooperation and empathy. This talk explores how our meditation practice of attending and befriending consciously facilitates the unfolding of our full evolutionary potential. The talk includes a guided meditation that helps us widen the circles of belonging to include all beings.

The Buddha taught that faith--trust in our true nature--is intrinsic to the spiritual path and the expression of wisdom. These two talks investigate the practices of presence that awaken our faith and the freedom that arises when our faith becomes radiant and full.