Intro talk by Jean Esther. Waking up to our direct experience in the present moment is the doorway to greater ease and peace in the body, mind and heart.

In a society that prizes overachieving, we are taught to scale it back in meditation practice. But strong determination is also an essential quality on the path to awakening. Here's how to fold your ambition and perfectionism into your practice.

In this talk, Aishah Shahidah Simmons explores the Buddha's teaching on the Five Hindrances — Sensual Desire, Ill Will, Sloth and Torpor, Restlessness and Worry, and Doubt — drawing on the Saṅgārava Sutta's water similes, the lineage of Sayagyi U Bha Kin through Rev. Dr. Leon E. Wright, and the words of Toni Cade Bambara and Audre Lorde. Offered through a BIPOC lens on Juneteenth, this teaching invites recognizing the hindrances with tenderness, not self-judgment, as a lifetime's practice toward liberation.

Much appreciation to Sayadaw U Vivekananda that offered a short teaching on the last morning of the Two-week retreat at IMS.

Includes instructions on 6-Part walking meditation at the end.

Sets the condition for wisdom to arise - help us see through the concotions of perception, thought and view.

An exploration of the First Establishment of Mindfulness

Dolls, loss, love and the narrative cure. Kafka consoles a girl with a series of letters about a lost doll. An excursion into four different and indispensable tasks for any contemplative practitioner: (i) Calming & stabilzing (ii) Dis-identification and decentering (iii) Deep Inquiry and thorough contemplative Investigation (iv) The bigger Picture – gaining an universal perspective on the personal

Morning instructions