Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia has been offering instruction in Theravada Buddhist teachings and practices since 1990. She is a student of the Western forest sangha, the disciples of Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Chah, and is a Lay Buddhist Minister in association with Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in California. She has served as resident teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, taught many months at IMS's Forest Refuge, and served as a Core Faculty member at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. She co-authored Older and Wiser: Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness, and Death and has written numerous articles for the Insight Journal of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.
This talk examines sakkāyaditthi or self-view—the subtle way that we relate to experience from the vantage point of self. Through training and insight, sakkāyaditthi is eradicated at the first stage of awakening.
This talk is about sīlabbataparāmāsa—a subtle clinging to rites, rituals, precepts, and practices. We train in order to see and overcome this heady attachment to our practices (dāna, sīla, bhāvanā, mettā bhāvanā).
This talk is about sīlabbataparāmāsa—a subtle clinging to rites, rituals, precepts, and practices. We train in order to see and overcome this heady attachment to our practices (dāna, sīla, bhāvanā, mettā bhāvanā).
Going for refuge mirrors the process of waking up. We settle enough to know what we are experiencing (Buddha); we learn to let things be the way are (Dhamma); and we experience directly the happiness and release that comes from skillful behavior (Sangha).
This talk addresses several potential difficulties in practice – attaching to ideas about mindfulness and concentration, thinking that nothing is happening in practice, feeling half here and half not, and the tendency to “do” the practice.
The Buddha defines three kinds of conceit—conceit itself (māna), the inferiority complex (omāna), and arrogance (atimāna). Conceit is a player in giving rise to a sense of self and perpetuating it though ignorance. This talk offers practical guidance to help meditators see conceit and uproot it through understanding and insight.
This talk outlines the Buddha’s teaching on the three forms of craving—craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, and craving for non-becoming. Taraniya encourages the practitioner to use the retreat environment to observe craving in what may seem like minor or insignificant moments. These moments hold potential for major insights.
Given the conflicts, wars, and divisiveness over the past year, many people ask, “How do we practice with all of this?” Taraniya offers reflections on opening to difficulty, making practical adjustments in our lives to support inner balance, and increasing our capacity to manage mindstates through understanding and wisdom.
Here we look at fourth satipatthana and its specific instructions on what to see and how to see it—the five hindrances, the five aggregates, the six sense bases, the seven factors of awakening, and the four noble truths—with an eye to realizing how this practice helps us overcome self-view.
