Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed)

Donald Rothberg, PhD, has practiced Insight Meditation since 1976, and has also received training in Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra practice and the Hakomi approach to body-based psychotherapy. Formerly on the faculties of the University of Kentucky, Kenyon College, and Saybrook Graduate School, he currently writes and teaches classes, groups and retreats on meditation, daily life practice, spirituality and psychology, and socially engaged Buddhism. An organizer, teacher, and former board member for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Donald has helped to guide three six-month to two-year training programs in socially engaged spirituality through Buddhist Peace Fellowship (the BASE Program), Saybrook (the Socially Engaged Spirituality Program), and Spirit Rock (the Path of Engagement Program). He is the author of The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World and the co-editor of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thi

Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed) is a religion podcast hosted by dharmaseed.org, with 144 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

dharmaseed.org hosts Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed), a religion show with 144 episodes published.

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  Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed)

  Donald Rothberg: Monday Night Talk: The Foundations of Our Practice

  Jul 13, 20261 hour

  (Spirit Rock Meditation Center) A main way to understand generally our practice is by seeing it as combining (1) avoiding “unskillful” or “unwholesome” actions and states of mind (and knowing how to practice when they arise), and (2) developing skillful or wholesome qualities. We explore different aspects of this way of seeing our practice: Understanding its relationship to the teaching on wise effort; seeing the core unskillful quality as reactivity (dukkha) in its two forms as grasping after the pleasant and pushing away the unpleasant, each in myriad ways; and developing positive qualities like concentration, mindfulness, kindness and compassion, generosity and the other paramis, and the Seven Factors of Awakening. We examine some of the complexities of practicing with reactivity, with a main one being that reactivity is often enmeshed with discernment; I can be judgmental and caught in reactivity, for example, as an activist who sees injustice clearly, with discernment. This calls therefore for transforming the reactivity, so we can make use of the discernment skillfully. We also look into some examples of both forms of practice, both in meditation and in the flow of daily life. The talk is followed by discussion.

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  Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed)

  Donald Rothberg: Monday Night Guided Meditation: Cultivating Three Foundational Meditative Capacities

  Jul 13, 202645 min

  (Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin with a brief introduction to the theme of this evening’s talk on the foundations of our practice—avoiding “unskillful” or “unwholesome” actions and states of mind (and knowing how to practice when they arise), on the one hand, and developing skillful or wholesome qualities, on the other. There is then a guided practice, linked with the talk theme, focused on developing (1) concentration (samadhi), (2) mindfulness (sati), and (3) awareness of reactivity, developed in part by noticing how we relate to what is moderately pleasant or unpleasant.

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  Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed)

  Donald Rothberg: Doing and Not-Doing in Meditation and Daily Life: Talk and Discussion

  Jun 28, 20261h 2m

  (Benicia Insight Meditation) We explore the nature of doing and not-doing, both in meditation and more generally. We begin with emphasizing the importance for the Buddha of diligence, skillful effort (one of the factors of the Eightfold Path), and doing. Yet there also is a clear place for what we can call “not-doing,” for example, in cultivating mindful receptivity to experience. We examine as well how being a “doer” is so central to many of our identities, whether in our roles or work or even in our meditation. We also look to how we often experience a kind of not-doing in everyday life in “flow” experiences in different aspects of life. Finally, we show how accessing the depths of human experience commonly requires a profound not-doing, as we find brought out, for example, in Taoism, some of the Buddha’s teachings, and Tibetan Mahamudra and Dzogchen. The talk is followed by discussion.

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  Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed)

  Donald Rothberg: Guided Meditation on Doing and Not-Doing in the Context of Developing Concentration and Mindfulness

  Jun 28, 202636 min

  (Benicia Insight Meditation) In the context of the basic instructions on developing first concentration (samadhi) and then mindfulness, we interweave guidance on emphasizing doing, or more active effort, and not-doing, including through opening more receptively, and some other short practices.

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  Donald Rothberg's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed)

  Donald Rothberg: Juneteenth and Our Practice

  Jun 19, 202653 min

  (East Bay Meditation Center) We begin with a short account of some of the history of Juneteenth and its origins in Texas, as well as how it developed in the decades after 1865, including under Jim Crow. We ask how consideration of Juneteenth and the ensuing history informs our practice, considering the three main elements of our practice: Training in wisdom (particularly in understanding the roots of racism in greed for power and wealth and a "divide and conquer" approach); meditation (both in examining our conditioning and working with difficult emotions), and ethical practice (developing care and addressing harm, for the benefit of all beings). The talk is followed by discussion.

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