How often do you reflect on having fun and playing as an adult? What do fun and play look like in your life? Does it result in joy? These are the questions Chaplain Kyle Sorys poses to the audience in this week’s talk. After a fifteen-minute meditation, Kyle starts by sharing his past struggles with meditation and his current exploration of including fun, play, and joy into daily mindfulness practice, primarily in the form of “Photography Meditation.” This leads to a short teaching on the...

How has your practice resulted in a greater sense of patience and an ability to be patient? As MOI teacher Johnathan Woodside states in this talk, just by returning again and again to the present moment, we are cultivating patience. Patience involves having a nonjudgmental and non-preferential willingness to engage with what is present. It also includes developing disenchantment, stilling, and direct knowledge of experience. Johnathan adds that patience helps the mind see clearly, especially...

In this week’s talk, MOI teacher Mark Wiesman leads us in a guided meditation through the Four Divine Abodes: loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. Mark tells us that we can go to these four places anytime we need. They are tools that can help us cultivate more openness and expansiveness in our hearts and minds, which by nature leads to more calm and peace in our lives.   If you feel inspired by these teachings, and wish to practice generosity, please consider...

Every human being experiences suffering at some point in life. Suffering is one of the ultimate truths that connect us to all humanity. But suffering is also unique to each of us in that we all experience suffering in our own distinct ways. Thus, in this talk, MOI teacher Anne Savery asks us an important question: “What are you suffering with right now? What parts of life are causing you suffering?” The point of this question is not to know suffering itself but to recognize how we relate to...

How often do you experience “bad days”?  When asked this question, MOI teacher Jonathan Woodside genuinely answered that he rarely has a bad day anymore.  He attributes this to two things: (1) living a skillful life by avoiding harm and (2) viewing every experience (both pleasant and unpleasant) as an opportunity for insight.  Of course, this naturally arises from the fruits of mindfulness and meditation practice.  But it is also more nuanced than that.  In this talk, Jonathan goes into...

What does it feel like when the mind is overcome by craving and clinging? How about when it is free? When the defilements of craving and clinging are present, we feel it in the body. We feel ourselves being pulled around and controlled by it. We become bound, fettered, and chained to it. But when the mind is free of defilements, we experience more freedom. There is more spaciousness, peacefulness, contentedness, and ease. What a difference! And, as MOI teacher Mark Wiesman states in this...

What comes to mind when you think of patience? Is it a positive or negative association? As MOI teacher Anne Savery states, part of the practice is observing our conditioning, history, and relationships with different things in the dharma. According to Anne, patience holds a variety of meanings. It involves endurance, spaciousness, forgiveness, and equanimity. “In the space of patience,” she says, “one can find joy and gratitude.” But first, there needs to be stability and tranquility to...

What is it like when you notice the mind lost in stories? What is it like when the mind arrives home to the present moment and sees clearly? These are the questions MOI teacher Johnathan Woodside asks us in this week’s talk as he discusses the difficulties of staying with the present moment experience of reality. He says that noticing how busy the mind is, how wild and distracted it can be, is the initial insight of meditation practice. We can easily be discouraged when we notice the business...

How often do you notice and reflect on the attitudes and intentions you bring to an experience? How often do these dispositions lead to peace and contentment? In this week’s talk, MOI teacher Kyle Sorys introduces the topic of Right Intention, the second factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. He states that mindfulness of intention is vital to how we walk the path because our intention is the cause of everything we do. Thus, it is beneficial to have a wise and skillful attitude as we approach...

How often do you find yourself discussing Dharma and practice with friends? For MOI teacher Mark Wiesman, it is more often than not, as Mark has lots of “dharma friends.” In this week’s talk, Mark shares four themes that have come up in his Dharma conversations with friends over the past month: (1) Can you meditate too much? (2) What is the difference between a cause and a condition? (3) Is there a problem with peak experience? (4) What exactly is right view? Mark continually touches on...

What comes to mind when reading or hearing the word renunciation? What emotions or feelings arise? Is there an association with happiness? In this week's talk, MOI teacher Anne Savery shares the formula for happiness, mainly through the lens of renunciation. Anne explains that renunciation is often associated with letting go, but the original intention of the Buddhist Pali word means to go forth, pointing to what is gained rather than what one gives up. Anne encourages us to reflect on what...

In this week’s talk, MOI teacher Johnathan Woodside discusses the Four Great Efforts, stating that they are the formula for transformation. This formula is simple: (1) diminish unwholesome states that already have arisen, (2) prevent unwholesome states that haven’t arisen from arising, (3) strengthen the wholesome states that are already developed, and (4) develop and cultivate the wholesome states that have not yet arisen. Johnathan likens it to being a curator of the mind. Just as one hires...

This week’s talk is all about the first step of the Path — Right View. Traditionally Right View is understanding the Four Noble Truths and the relationship between craving and suffering. But, as MOI teacher Rev. Kyle Sorys explains, it entails much more. “Whatever teachings lead to peace, stillness, harmony, which lead to the disappearing of the problems of life, which lead to clear seeing,” Rev. Kyle says, “is Right View.” It is seeing as the Buddha himself saw, which means seeing the Dharma...

Like gardening and growing crops, spiritual practice involves cultivating the mind and body.  In this week's talk, MOI teacher Mark Wiesman explains how we can develop a mind inclined towards wholesome qualities of peace, contentment, compassion, and understanding.  He states that it's about creating the conditions for skillful thoughts and habits while uprooting the unwholesome weeds of greed and anger.   Mark repeatedly emphasizes that cultivating the garden of mind is not about forcing...

What does your spiritual practice look like?  What type of rituals and routines are part of your practice?  In this episode, MOI teacher Anne Savery shares a bit about her practice, specifically through exploring rites and rituals.  She calls it her daily sadhana, which she defines as "a spiritual practice that goes straight to the goal with conviction."  Anne states that her intention is for us to reflect on our practice and explore rituals for ourselves.  Then we can discern which ones are...

It is the fifth Tuesday of May, which means something a little different than usual.  In this week's episode, the MOI teachers come together as a panel to answer some community questions.  The topics that arise include: (1) How to deal with diminishing returns in meditation, (2) Advice regarding meditating with the eyes open, and (3) Working with our relationship to pleasant and unpleasant feeling tones.      If you feel inspired by these teachings, and wish to practice generosity, please...

When venturing out on a difficult journey, it is helpful to have a map that lays out the terrain. According to MOI teacher Rev. Kyle Sorys, this is exactly what the Buddha intended when teaching the Noble Eightfold Path. In this week's talk, Rev. Kyle briefly touches on each aspect of the Eightfold Path in addition to explaining the Path in terms of the Three Trainings -- virtue, meditation, and wisdom. The point of practicing the Path is to cultivate insight and understanding. It's about...

After sitting a seven-day retreat, MOI teacher Anne Savery shares some of the insights she has gained in this week's talk.  She touches on a range of topics, such as giving ourselves permission to rest, stability,  our habitual conditioning for striving, energy, expectations, and increasing our capacity for spaciousness.   Most importantly, Anne emphasizes the significance of gratitude and compassion -- whether we are on retreat or going about our day-to-day activities.    If you feel...

Are you any good at concentrating your attention?  Is your mind able to sustain a connection, or is it often fragmented?  In this week's talk, MOI teacher Johnathan Woodside explains the practice of concentration, stating that it's not as difficult to achieve as you may think.  When watching a movie or television show we often experience a concentrated mind.  But when it comes to sustaining a connection with the breath during meditation, many people struggle to stay present.  Johnathan states...

This week's talk is all about the conditionality of things.  In Buddhism, this is known as Dependent Arising or Dependent Origination.  As MOI teacher Mark Wiesman states, this teaching is "profound, hard to see and understand, unattainable by pure reasoning."  As such, Mark spends the hour unpacking this challenging topic.  Except for Nibbāna (the unconditioned), everything relies on causes and conditions for its arising.  "When this arises, that arises.  When this ceases, that ceases," Mark...

Where do you get entangled?  What does your mind get tangled up in?  In this week's talk, MOI teacher Anne Savery investigates these questions, stating that we can become entangled in anything our mind thinks about: work, relationships, emotions, ideas, situations, etc.  When we become entangled, we need tools to help untangle the tangle instead of becoming so enmeshed in it.  The Dharma is one of these tools.  Thus, Anne shares and unpacks the Jaṭā Sutta, a short teaching of the Buddha which...

What exactly is mindfulness?  What are the qualities and characteristics that makeup mindfulness?  In this week's talk, MOI teacher Johnathan Woodside explains the spiritual faculty of mindfulness.  He defines it as present-centered awareness free from wanting our experience to be different than it is.  Mindful awareness is knowing what is happening as it's happening.  It's about connecting to our direct experience instead of getting lost in the stories of the mind.  Johnathan emphasizes the...

An out-of-the-ordinary episode in which the community of MOI shares about their individual practice of mindfulness and meditation in daily life.   If you feel inspired by these teachings, and wish to practice generosity, please consider supporting MOI and its teachers by visiting, https://mindfulnessoutreachinitiative.org/generosity/

In this week's talk, MOI teacher Kyle Sorys speaks to the importance of morality and virtue to one's spiritual practice, which leads to a brief discussion of the Five Precepts and ends with a contemplation practice of Thich Nhat Hanah's Five Mindfulness Trainings.   If you feel inspired by these teachings, and wish to practice generosity, please consider supporting MOI and its teachers by visiting, https://mindfulnessoutreachinitiative.org/generosity/