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.
Though its role in the process of waking up is pivotal, intention is very subtle, rarely conscious, and outside the control of self. Purification of intention is made possible through calm awareness of the things we think/do/say, kindness, and non-judging.
Over the years of practice we work with the precepts in a number of ways—using resolve and restraint, becoming acquainted with our karmic patterns and feeling the consequences of these, and strengthening skillful states by noticing what it feels like to do good, to behave well.
We confront many obstacles in practice—our karmic conditioning, cultural conditioning, and resistance to the realities of anicca, dukkha, anatta. In order to surmount these obstacles, anyone who wishes to progress along the path, must act on faith and the factors that support that.
This talk is part of a five part series on the Sabbasava Sutta (MN2), one of the most important and practical suttas in the Pali Canon. It summarizes our deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and the methods by which these are managed and overcome.
This talk is part of a five part series on the Sabbasava Sutta (MN2), one of the most important and practical suttas in the Pali Canon. It summarizes our deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and the methods by which these are managed and overcome.
This talk is part of a five part series on the Sabbasava Sutta (MN2), one of the most important and practical suttas in the Pali Canon. It summarizes our deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and the methods by which these are managed and overcome.
This talk is part of a five part series on the Sabbasava Sutta (MN2), one of the most important and practical suttas in the Pali Canon. It summarizes our deeply entrenched patterns of delusion and suffering and the methods by which these are managed and overcome.
The Sabbasava Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 2 (All the Taints), deals with the eradication of the three taints: desire for sensual pleasure, desire for being, and ignorance. The taints are defilements brought about and strengthened by unwise attention. The seven methods are: Seeing, Restraining, Using, Enduring, Avoiding, Removing and Developing. This talk begins a five part series on this sutta. It addresses Seeing.
The talk includes stories about learning generosity through giving to monks and nuns during the daily dawn walk (pindapad) in Thailand … that is, eeing how this opens a logjam in the heart and one experiences the sheer joy of giving. This talk also outlines and gives examples of the different kinds of giving as listed in AN 8.31 and 8.33.
