Balancing Care for Self & Others: Buddha's Advise
A particularly difficult human challenge involves trying to balance a desire to be there for others – both those in our personal lives and i...
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Shell Fischer's Podcast
Insight Meditation teacher Shell Fischer, founder of Mindful Shenandoah Valley, offers her 25+ years of mindfulness training and study in these weekly talks about how we can use meditation p...
Episodes
20 of 100 episodesThe Buddha's 'Most Important Practice': Patience
The Buddha was once asked "what is the most important thing for us to practice?" He answered: patience (or khanti, in Pali) and assured us t...
So Special/So Wounded: Navigating Our Hopes & Fears
We all tend to seek out and hope for gain, status, praise, and pleasure, and resist or fear loss, disgrace, blame, and pain – even though al...
Just Thinking, Sweetie: Working With Busy Mind
Often during our meditation practice, we encounter a state known as "busy mind," which is when there's a kind of ongoing flow of anxious or...
BREATHE: Right Now, It's Like This
During difficult times, allowing ourselves to pause, breathe, and come back home to the present moment is exactly how we can regain our foot...
TRY SOFTER: Working With Change & Grief
An essential aspect of our meditation practice involves training ourselves to very consciously and compassionately navigate the truth of con...
THIS IS IT: Now What?
Instead of resisting, denying, or trying to ignore a big change in our lives or in our world, the Buddhist teachings invite us to open up to...
CLAIM YOUR SEAT: Buddha's Teachings on Doubt
Our common experience of doubt – in ourselves, and in our ability to make good decisions for ourselves, especially - is actually the very la...
Some Things Just Hurt: Allowing Our Pain
Whenever we experience pain or suffering, our common tendency is to believe that not only is the cause of our suffering in some way wrong, b...
My Relationships: Medicine, or Poison?
The Buddha insisted that our relationships make up the "whole" of our spiritual life, and and urged us to use our mindfulness practice to be...
Put Your Heart Into It Again: The Buddha On Determination
As opposed to the act of "striving," which involves a kind of unhealthy or stressful clinging to some sort of expectation, and typically ari...
Do No Harm/Take No Sh*t: A Buddhist Lesson on Boundaries
Whenever we perceive that some sort of harm is being done – either by another person, people, or even on a more national or global level - h...
What Would Buddha Do? Taking Refuge in the Beloved
This talk addresses the question: How can we flow between all the different roles, hats, or identities that we place on ourselves every day,...
It Takes A Long Time to Grow Young: Nurturing Contentment
Right before the Buddha's enlightenment, a single memory from his childhood apparently not only led him to nirvana, but to the profound teac...
How To Work With Fear & Grief: Pause
The Buddhist teachings are continually calling our attention to the truth of what is called annica , or impermanence, because essentially, i...
"It's All Yours" - Responding to Disrespect and Insult
As the Buddha's teachings remind us over and over, even though it's difficult, we never want to let another person's anger, disrespect, or c...
EMPTY OF EXPECTATION: Exploring "Beginner's Mind"
While the Buddha assured us that it's healthy to be aware of all our different intentions, he also suggested that once we've planted the see...
Content in the Center: Exploring the Middle Way
When we practice what the Buddha called The Middle Way, we start to realize with more clarity that contentment resides at the center of our...
The Sacred Healing of Noble Silence
In order for us to practice well, we need to learn how to create and then dwell in a quality the Buddha called Noble Silence – something tha...
What Am I 'Really" Offering Myself and Others?: An Exploration of Dana
In the Buddhist teachings, the practice of dana (or generosity) is considered the number one heart quality that we are urged to cultivate, i...