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Retreat Dharma Talks

Nine-day retreat: The heart’s release - Cultivating the spiritual faculties

In Buddhist practice, confidence, energy, mindfulness, collectedness and insight are cultivated together as the five spiritual faculties (Indriya). These qualities exist naturally in the mind and have both a linear and dynamic interplay. By developing them in meditation practice, we more clearly understand what needs balancing in both our meditation and overall spiritual cultivation.

When all five faculties are brought to fulfilment they overflow in the heart’s release. A heart released from suffering and its causes has an embodied realisation of Nibbāna: freedom from the stress inherent in misunderstanding the world.

2025-02-21 (10 days) Te Moata Retreat Center

  
2025-02-25 11 instructions and meditation: Exploring the presence (and absence) of the hindrances 46:40
Jill Shepherd
2025-02-25 12 instructions and meditation: Feeling-tones or vedanā 32:48
Willa Thaniya Reid
2025-02-25 13 talk: Exploring aspects of vedanā or feeling-tone 25:43
Willa Thaniya Reid
2025-02-26 14 instructions and meditation: Exploring citta, heart-mind 55:21
Willa Thaniya Reid
2025-02-26 15 instructions and meditation: Bringing awareness to mental activity, including thoughts, emotions and mind-states 36:04
Jill Shepherd
2025-02-26 16 talk: Relating to afflictive mind-states with wisdom and compassion 26:02
Jill Shepherd
2025-02-27 17 instructions and meditation: Releasing grasping 45:38
Jill Shepherd
2025-02-27 18 instructions and meditation: Finding the loveliness of the breath 41:08
Willa Thaniya Reid
2025-02-27 19 talk: Reflections on samādhi 21:38
Willa Thaniya Reid
2025-02-28 20 instructions and meditation: Opening to gladness 42:46
Jill Shepherd
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