Yuka Saionji joined us this week to share her personal journey, learnings from her remarkable work around the power of prayer, and offer some uplifting stories in response to 3/11's tsunami in Japan.  Below are the audio clips from the gathering ...

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Rev. Heng Sure, a beloved Buddhist monk, spoke this last Wednesday.  Below are some audio clips from his talk:

Some excerpts ... How do you determine a lie? Check your intention; words are neutral. What did your teacher advice George W. Bush when he was a US president? Be to be a full-time volunteer. :) Has capitalism failed us? Its hard to say if a system fails us or if its the greed in our minds. How do we steady our practice? Practice is second; practioner is first. How can you not hate the policy makers who make harmful decisions? Remember that policy is different from the policy maker.

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This Wednesday, we had the privilege of hearing two remarkable guest speakers. One was Jacques Verduin, founder of Insight Prison Project, who shared some of his beautiful stories after 15 years of work in bringing mindfulness practice to the toughest prisons in the US. With Jacques was Rusty, who spent 30 years in prison for taking a life, and whose life was transformed by daily practice of meditation. A very moving evening.

Below are the audio clips ...

You can also download the clips individually.

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Every week, we usually do a circle of sharing around the thought of the week.  But this week, we had the privilege of hosting the well known meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal of Insight Meditation Center, share his personal (and inspiring!) life journey and then engage with some dynamic Q&A.  The audio clips from the gathering are online ...

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• Henry David Thoreau: Nature is full of genius, full of divinity that no snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
• Nature as probability: it is the nature of 101 highway to have accidents. But having your car totalled was a struggle because it had not come to it's natural end. It seemed violent. But that forced me to take the train everyday. Maybe I have to unnaturally lose the car, so I can let other lessons unfold.
• What is natural? Is anger natural too? Or should we not let that unfold?
• Nature helps me but it's hard to remember that. It's like exercise ... I often forget its value.
• There's a big oak tree in Henry Coe Park -- it seems alive to me.
• Bright river: 'Waking Life' on stage and you're a participant.
• Before anything, there was light; it was light only because it was contained in darkness.
• At a certain spot in the woods, there hasn't been much imposition of ideas on it.
• Don't let personal thoughts or feelings encumber your experience of nature.
• Quote by George Bernard Shaw: "Person who cannot accept self change, cannot change anything else."
• Hiking is a form of meditation -- trees have been silent for so long and I can feel it.
• Personal goal: try to be more in nature, no buses grinding or people rambling.
• Nature is an incredibly important teacher for me.
• In Australia, once, I honestly felt the presence of rocks ... what they had been through and experienced.
• Listening to the wind helps me a lot.
• What happens if the natural unfolding is disillusionment?
• "If you choose to sit it out or dance, I hope you do dance."
• Any choice you make will be your nature too. And you don't know it till you get there.
• Sun God's prayer: consort of shadow.
• Sometimes half poetry is more true than full poetry.
• When I see dead nature (like broken concrete), I feel nature calling me to ask me -- can you do something with this?
• Beauty of nature vs. beauty of city: what's the difference? I don't know but I get more drawn to nature.
• Natural folding -- folding is also a part of nature. All things die. But whenver that happens, we resist.
• Is negativity nature? Are these walls nature? Is white nature? There's a different energy ... a temple vs. a bar.
• In terms of emotion -- what is more natural -- anger or compassion? For me, it's compassion.
• Both light and darkness are constantly trying to coming together.
• What makes nature special is that it's beyond us -- that gives us nothing to attach our thoughts to. And connecting to that, gives us a certain sense of joy.
• Flowing with nature, accepting nature as it unfold moment to moment, is key.
• Ocean: fish are plants, bigger fish are eating smaller fish. It's all nature. Growth lies in accepting that. The city and the street and the garden and the parks.
• One of the first American to go to Japan to study Aikido learn a valuable lesson: simple kindness trumped violence.
• Recently in the Amazon in Brazil, I saw two rivers next to each other, but they don't mix with each other!
• I know a person who meditates best when in the midst of people; particularly, the trains of India! Most people go to find "nature" or peace, he rushes to find chaos! :)
• What I remember about nature is the smells -- almost the internal part of that experience.
• Central concept of spiritual path is to find our true self.
• River metaphor vs. climbing to the top of the mountaintop metaphor. With one you flow, with the other you struggle.

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