Guided meditation (about 55 min) on emptiness by Michael Taft at the San Francisco Dharma Collective. Noticing that awareness has no center, and that every part of awareness is equally aware. From the viewpoint of Mind, all content arises in awareness. Self and world arise in the field of awareness. This means that awareness has no center point, no place …
The World Is Inside You
Guided Meditation with Michael Taft The world of our perceptions is a fabrication of the mind. We do not perceive the external world directly, but rather through the inputs of our sense organs. This input is then assembled (i.e. fabricated) in the brain (based on memory, best-guesses, unconscious biases, etc.) and then projected into the conscious mind. Most nondual meditation …
Discovering Sky-like Mind
Michael Taft leads a 55 minute guided meditation at the San Francisco Dharma Collective. Relaxing attention until awareness is even in all directions, and the mind appears like sky. Interested in nondual meditation? Click here sky photo by Bill Tyne
Let Go of Grasping – Guided Meditation
Michael Taft leads a 50 minute guided meditation on not grasping onto anything (essentially a variation on shikantaza). Followed by Q&A about pain, suffering, grasping, the 4 Noble Truths (actually just the first two), and the importance of being the kind of dog who drops the ball More on Letting go. photo by Ashtyn Warner
Befriending Your Mind
In this guided meditation, we dive again into the territory of meditating on the activity of the mind. It’s not about controlling, dominating, changing, or stopping your thoughts. Instead, it’s all about making friends with the 3 lbs. of yogurt sloshing around in your cranium. Extra-length 50 minute guided meditation. Followed by Q&A session featuring the “bait ball” metaphor of …
Meditation for the End of Civilization, with Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Host Michael W. Taft speaks with bestselling author and meditation teacher Rick Hanson about how to maintain resilience in the face of the coming potential collapse of civilization, the problem with agriculture, meditation methods to build inner strengths, Rick’s upcoming book Neuro-dharma, and more. Rick Hanson, PhD, is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC …
How to Escape the Observer Trap
Michael Taft leads a guided mindfulness meditation (from beginning until about 45:00). Variations on open monitoring. Then a Q&A that covers escaping the observer trap (i.e. the feeling of being the one controlling the meditation) as well as comments about the the history of modern Vipassana. Includes gift of radical permission to experiment with your practice in whatever way you …
Am I Awake Right Now?
by Michael W. Taft Sometimes when we talk about awakening, we are talking about an event in the past, with the implication that that awakening is permanent or still happening. “I got awakened two years ago, and now I am awake.” It’s as if you said, “Look at my cool tattoo, I got it two years ago.” This is not …
The Liberating Practice of the Fire Kasina – with Daniel Ingram
Author and meditation teacher Daniel Ingram speaks with host Michael W. Taft about how the Fire Kasina practice can be used as an insight practice. Subjects include: the background of kasina practice in the Thervada tradition, using kasinas to go into jhana, how vipassana practice interacts with jhana practice, meditation on the Three Characteristics, and detailed instructions for doing the …
How to Enter Jhana – a Guided Meditation
In this program at the San Francisco Dharma Collective, Michael Taft leads a guided meditation (approx 44 min long) on the method for getting into the first jhana. Then a talk on how to to get into jhana, followed by a Q&A session. Contains the rare teaching of how entering a jhana is like going to an Iggy Pop concert …
Meditation, Madness, and Psychology, with Tucker Peck
Tucker Peck, meditation teacher and clinical psychologist, talks with host Michael Taft about how whether awakening (both in the traditional “stream entry” sense or in other definitions) actually “fixes” a person’s psychology or not. Topics include: the validity of the Progress of Insight model, Tucker’s hellacious Dark Night experience and the dukkha ñanas in general, when to switch from shamatha …
Buddhism as Complete Culture
by Shaun Bartone What I found stifling about Western Buddhist practice is the obsessive focus on meditation as the paramount practice. What is completely lacking in modern Buddhist communities is a culture that is creative and productive, that grows and transforms, that generates new cultural forms, new ways of life. The singular focus on meditation becomes, as Vince Horn called …
Deconstructing the Sense of Self – Feb, 2019
In this program at the San Francisco Dharma Collective, Michael Taft leads a guided meditation (approx 43 min long) on the “focus in” technique (aka “Deconstructing the Sense of Self”) . Then a talk on how to deconstruct the sense of self, followed by a Q&A session. Subscribe to Michael Taft’s Youtube channel to get more great videos as they …