Dharma Talks

Breath Relaxation - Basic Practice -- (30 minutes) A guided meditation for relaxing with the breath.  Listen to Windows Media version

The Core Practice

Part 1: About the Core Practice (15 minutes) -- The Core Practice is so named because it forms the basis of Shinzen's unique "algorithmic" approach to teaching mindfulness. This talk serves as a general introduction to the topic.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Part 2: Contacting the Body (12 minutes) -- Key points about how to establish “simple contact” with body sensations.  The first of the four steps that constitute the core practice.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Part 3: Contacting Body, Image and Talk (12 minutes) -- How to contact thought tangibly in terms of mental imagery and internal dialog.  How to combine this with body awareness to make a systematic inventory of the elements of subjective experience.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Part 4: Tracking the Eight States (13 minutes) -- One of the most basic strategies in scientific inquiry involves the interplay of taking things apart and putting them back together.  Faced with a complex, mysterious phenomenon, the scientist analyzes it into simple components and then investigates how those components interact to create the phenomenon.  The first three steps of the core practice help you isolate the basic strands of sensory experience that underlie your subjective states and precede your objective behaviors. The fourth and last step is called “tracking the eight states” or “noting the BIT combos.”  This step allows you to see how those basic strands interweave to produce the you of the moment.  This nurtures insight and changes behavior.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Part 5: Putting It All Together (12 minutes) -- Having discussed in detail each of the four component steps in the core sequence, we are now in a position to describe the whole process as a single integrated procedure.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Ego (20 minutes) -- Is ego good or bad? The answer obviously depends on how one chooses to use the word. Shinzen attempts to shed light on this notoriously slippery subject.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Equanimity (14 minutes) -- Equanimity is one of the most misunderstood concepts on the spiritual path. It is not aloof denial of feeling. Indeed it could be defined as a radical permission to feel...permission so deep that it changes the nature of feeling. As a state of non-interference, equanimity is related to self-integration and to true love.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Flavors of Impermanence (19 minutes) -- Impermanence has been a central theme in Buddhism throughout its history, but different teachers have understood it in different ways.  Shinzen carefully analyzes various ways that impermanence may present itself to the meditator, some of which are not intuitively obvious.  Just as a wine connoisseur develops a palate sensitive to the full spectrum of gustatory flavors, the meditator learns to detect and appreciate the full range of "annica flavors."  Listen to Windows Media Version

Functions of Impermanence (23 minutes) -- Shinzen continues his discussion of impermanence by describing its conceptual and experiential functions.  Listen to Windows Media Version

How the Buddha Became a Roman Catholic Saint (16 minutes) -- Originating in India, Buddhism spread to other cultural areas such as China and Tibet. As the result of interactions with the preexisting cultures there, new forms evolved. Now coming to the West, Buddhism is engaged in a vigorous cross fertilization on three fronts: with the psychotherapeutic community, the sciences and the "native" religions of the West, especially Christianity. But Buddhism's encounter with Christianity began in a sense a thousand years ago. The outcome is both revealing and surprising.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Meditation and Consciousness

Part 1: (30 minutes) -- Shinzen Young's plenary presentation at the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference, recorded in April, 2000 during which Shinzen describes the results of 30 years of meditation practice to an audience of critically-minded skeptical scientists and philosophers from around the world in an effort to convince them of the relevance of meditation to the scientific study of consciousness.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Part 2: Q&A (22 minutes) -- The question and answer session with the scientists in attendance which followed Shinzen's plenary presentation at the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference.  Listen to Windows Media Version

The Nature of Pleasure (12 minutes) -- What do we want from pleasure? Is it intensity, variety and duration of pleasure that we seek or something else? Shinzen's hypothesis is that what we really want is not quite pleasure per se, but a more subtle quality of experience which he calls fulfillment or satisfaction. So what is fulfillment and how does it relate to pleasure?  Listen to Windows Media Version

Phenomena in Practice

Part 1: Yuckies, Blissies, Hazies and Dazies (19 minutes) -- Shinzen talks about four phenomena that can come up in meditation practice in general but especially during intensive practice times such as retreats.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Part 2: Crazies and Grudgies (30 minutes) -- Shinzen discusses two additional phenomena that can come up during meditation practice.  Listen to Windows Media Version

Reincarnation, No Self and the Law of Karma (17 minutes) -- The Buddha taught that beings are reborn until they realize that there is no self.  But if there is no self, then what does it mean to be reborn?  Shinzen shares some thoughts on this apparent contradiction in an extemporaneous Dharma Talk recorded specifically for this website.  Listen to Windows Media Version