Dharma Glimpses with Judy Lief

[This episode originally aired on December 27, 2022]  I'd like to introduce three simple short meditation practices that help us tune in to the rich and ongoing process of exchange that marks our lives altogether  •  we're always giving something out to the world and receiving something from it  •  we are affected by others and we affect others in so many ways; and we're also quite susceptible to the energies and the outpourings from those around us  •  in the first practice we begin by looking at the simple and ordinary process of breathing, feeling the qualities of the different rhythms of the breath  •  th...

[This episode originally aired on December 20, 2022] One of my favorite nursery rhymes contains quite a bit of wisdom: “Row row, row, row your boat gently down the stream; merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream”  •  if we think of the stream as a stream of teachings, then we could consider the Buddha as the source of the stream  •  from that beginning a great river continues to flow over thousands of years  •  where does this stream flow? It flows into an ocean, which you could say is the awakening of the practitioner  •  you have a boat to carry you down this stream, an...

[This episode originally aired on January 15, 2024]  The phrase, “When you lose your mind, come back” describes a lot of what happens in meditation: repeatedly losing our minds, and repeatedly bringing ourselves back  •  the moment we’ve noticed we’ve lost it is the moment we can return  •  what are we returning to? the simplicity of the present moment  •  another phrase Trungpa Rinpoche used quite a lot was, “Don’t think too much”  •  what are the benefits and what are the limits of thinking and conceptual understanding?  •  in the Buddhist tradition scholarship is highly valued  •  however, to be a realized person, to live a dharmic lifestyle, yo...

[This episode originally aired on January 8, 2024]  At our core is our tender heart, tinged with a touch of sadness  •  it is sweet and vulnerable  •  this soft spot may be deeply buried, but it is always there  •  even very simple or momentary experiences can connect us with this heart: you might watch a pair of swallows fly back and forth, over and over, bringing food to their hungry chicks, and something melts or softens in you  •  it is so beautiful to be touched in this way  •  but this inner core of tenderness can also make us feel threatened and vulnerable  •  so we learn to armor up...

[This episode originally aired on January 1, 2024]  Trungpa Rinpoche emphasized the importance of understanding space  •  he encouraged us to explore our experiences of boredom, our discomfort with stillness, and our tendency to fill space  •  he pointed out that the basic energy pervading all of space is love and kindness; so to cultivate greater kindness and love, it makes sense to relate to space and its qualities  •  he introduced three aspects or qualities of space  •  the first is that space is indestructible, because it doesn't come from anywhere and doesn’t go anywhere; it is unborn, it is unceasing, and it is impossible to ma...

[This episode originally aired on December 25, 2023]  Today I'd like to explore the topic of space  •  the idea of space as it relates to meditation practice is connected with the notion of “gap” — noticing gaps at the end of each outbreath, noticing the little refreshing moments between things, which we often miss  •  our connection with space can be an almost embodied or physical sense of things: we can sense when a space seems threatening or welcoming  •  we can begin to explore our relationship with space very simply by noticing our tendency to keep ourselves occupied when discomfort arises  •  can we just be at ease with ou...

[This episode originally aired on December 18, 2023]  In this episode, I'd like to explore the idea of walls — our internal walls, as well as the walls we create between ourselves and others  •  we're told we need to have clear boundaries; at the same time, we have the challenge of how to bridge the gap between self and others  • the wall between ourselves and others is not always so visible; it can take us by surprise as we try to connect in some way  •  there are times when we deliberately create walls: when we are developing a meditation practice, we wall off distractio...

[This episode originally aired on December 11, 2023]  I've been thinking a lot recently about peace, especially the Buddhist view of peace  •  it's one of those ironic things: throughout history people have longed for peace and prayed for peace, yet we seem unable to free ourselves from conflict, war and struggle  •  what’s more, our desire for peace can actually manifest as aggression: “if I can defeat my enemy, then I'll be able to finally have some peace”  •  when we talk about peace, what do we really mean? how is peace talked about in different aspects of the dharma?  •  Trungpa Rinpoche taught that we should b...

 [This episode originally aired on December 4, 2023]  Buddhist training has two sides, somewhat parallel to pure science and applied science  •  there is the meditation aspect, the inward journey; and there is the application of that in the world, or meditation in action  •  we all have the capacity to help; we all have the capacity to cultivate compassion and also to cultivate wisdom and insight, so that compassion is intelligent  •  but each of us has to find our own way to engage  •  according to the Buddhist teachings, there are five fundamental ways of engaging in the world  •  the first way is to create an ac...

 [This episode originally aired on Nov. 27, 2023]  Lately I've been thinking about the slogan, “Always maintain only a joyful mind”  •  at the same time, I've been haunted by the teachings that describe samsara, the nature of reality, as an ocean of suffering  •  if the world is marked by endless suffering, how can you be joyful? and if the world is fundamentally good and wholesome, how do you account for suffering?  •  the Buddha's earliest teachings on the Four Noble Truths — suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path — were presented as a liberating and joyful discovery  •  we recognize there are causes...

[This episode originally aired on Nov. 20, 2023]  In this episode, I'd like to explore such things as resistance, avoidance, procrastination — and why it’s so hard to keep going  •  I think such things are connected with expectations and its partner, disappointment  •  in one form or another, or at one time or another, I think most of us have had these kinds of experiences  •  but we don't need to view such things as character flaws or annoying obstacles; they actually are an important part of the whole spiritual path  •  if you never felt frustrated, if you never felt resistance, that might be a sign that you ar...

[This episode originally aired on Nov. 20, 2023]   This episode is about groundlessness and uncertainty  •  how do we respond when we are no longer on familiar ground, when we feel insecure?  •  it can feel so uncomfortable that we might begin to panic; and often, when we reach that point, we scramble — we scramble to find some new secure ground to replace the one that we have left  •  so we go on a search to find some basis that is reliable, something we can count on, some sense of solidity  •  sometimes meditation is taught as a way to find such ground, a way to find some cal...

[This episode originally aired on Nov. 13, 2023]  One function of meditation practice is the quality of exposing and uncovering what's going on inside our thoughts and feelings  •  when we practice, the basic fundamental pattern that becomes obvious is how much our thinking revolves around our own needs and wants and desires  •  we look at what is there without judgment, without being embarrassed, without trying to prove anything  •  all of this provides ground for what Trungpa Rinpoche referred to as cultivating a Mahayana mentality — a mentality of openness, love, wisdom, and compassion  •  in cultivating a Mahayana mentality, four factors come into play  •  the first...

[This episode originally aired on Nov. 6, 2023]  The “five powers” are five supports for your practice  •  they are: determination, familiarization, seed of virtue, remorse, and aspiration  •  with determination, you're willing to do what it takes to get from here to there; it is connected with having some sense of why we're doing this all together; with determination, we just keep going  •  familiarization is becoming familiar with our own potential of awakened heart, becoming familiar with our patterns of confusion and awake  •  it is getting to know yourself, peeling away levels of deception and confusion to reveal something real and solid  •  the third power is called...

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 30, 2023]  All beings truly want to be happy and content; so why do we continually and repeatedly create situations for ourselves and others that only lead to greater suffering?  •  so many large-scale problems in the world, such as warfare, famine, hatred, injustice, poverty, can be traced back to just four simple patterns: grasping, greed, hatred and ignorance  • they are tricky, because they start out so simply and innocently  •  for instance, with grasping, maybe we're window shopping and we see a beautiful pen; we admire this beautiful pen, and then we buy it  •   the pen is now our prope...

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 23, 2023]  Many classical Buddhist texts on meditation say that the best place to meditate or to practice is a quiet place in the forest, free from distractions, pleasant and refreshing  •  but what if you're a busy mother? what if you're struggling to pay the bills by taking on three jobs? what if you're dealing with a chronic illness? what then?  •  if we spend all of our time resenting the circumstances we're in, we will be frozen and unable to do anything  •  at some point we simply have to surrender to the circumstances we are in  •  we mig...

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 16, 2023]  In Buddhist psychology, even large scale events and large emotional upheavals can be traced back step-by-step to simple little things  •  just a thought, just an idea, just a memory, just a little emotional undertone can quickly expand and expand until it's out of control  •  you could view this as bad news in seeing how quickly things escalate beyond our control, or you could think of this as good news in that even difficult and intense situations can be traced back and we can unravel them, get to the source, and thereby undercut their power  • ...

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 9, 2023]  The Mahayana path, the path of the Bodhisattva warrior of wisdom and compassion, has a great deal to do with how we relate to ourselves and to one another  •  what kind of others do we include in our world?  •  what kind of underlying feelings do we honestly have about the people in our lives and the people we encounter?  •  everybody is worthy of our attention, but usually we engage in a lot of picking and choosing: who is worthy of our attention and who is not  •  the practice I want to briefly introduce is the practice o...

[This episode originally aired on Oct. 2, 2023]  The Mahayana, or open path, is the path of the Bodhisattva — the enlightened warrior of wisdom and compassion  •  at the core of the Mahayana path is an outrageous vow, called the Bodhisattva vow, where we vow to emulate the great Bodhisattvas of wisdom and compassionate action  •  the Bodhisattva vow, conventionally speaking, makes no sense at all  •  you vow to save all sentient beings as vast as they are throughout space and time  •  you might think, that's pretty darn presumptuous to make a vow like that; you might even call it absurd, impossible  •  nonetheless, you do it  •  it's craz...

[This episode originally aired on Sept. 26, 2023]  This period of history has been marked by incredible leaps in efficiency: things that used to take a great deal of time and effort can get done more quickly and easily than ever  •  but there are whole areas of reality that can't be accessed by efficiency, no matter how quick or clever or speedy we are  •  in fact, the harder we try and the speedier we get, the further away we are  •  there's a value, at least once in a while, of taking a break from trying to be efficient, from trying to get somewhere...

(This episode originally aired on Sept. 19, 2023)  In Buddhist psychology, a lot of emphasis is placed on the process of perception because the way we perceive —and misperceive — has tremendous consequences  •  in grade school we are taught an oversimplified view of what it means to have a sense perception: there's an object out there, and there's the eyeball, and the brain, and boom, just like that, a perception  •  you might say, I saw an apple, but of course you never just see an apple — you see everything around the apple as well  •  all of that came into your little eyeball, and you just decide...

[This episode originally aired on June 6, 2023]  There are many ways to look at the connection between spirituality and our everyday lives  •  in the Buddhist tradition, the basic components are very simple and straightforward: they are wisdom, compassion, and effective action  •  an image that  illustrates how theses three components work together is that of a wheel — a wheel with a hub, spokes, and a rim  •  the hub at the center connects the wheel to the energy source; it distributes that energy through the spokes to the rim  •  in terms of the Buddhist path, that hub involves working with the mind   •  the cultivation of mindf...

[This episode originally aired on May 30, 2023]  When the Buddha spoke of being “a son or daughter of noble family,” what was he referring to?  •  in India, where the Buddha taught, there was a caste system with very clear distinctions between the noble castes, the less noble castes, and the untouchables  •  the closest thing in many Western societies is being born into wealth or being born into poverty  •  with extreme wealth comes access to extreme power; you basically enter a different dimension, one accessible to only the privileged few  •  but the Buddha completely redefined the meaning of “noble”  •  you are acknowledged as a son or daug...

[This episode originally aired on May 23, 2023]  Today’s topic is perception, how we see our world  •  each of us sees things a little bit differently, and optical illusions highlight this fact  •  in one well known optical illusion, some people see a chalice, while other people see two women facing each other  •  which is it?  •  you might see a chalice when everyone around you sees two women  •  the problem begins when we take our version as solid and real, when we clamp down on our particular way of viewing the world and close our mind to any other possible options  •  it's humbling to recognize...

[This episode originally aired on May 16, 2023]  I find it inspiring to discover wisdom in the midst of so many ordinary stories, even simple children's stories  •  the Wizard of Oz is one such story  •  the main character is Dorothy, whose life changes completely when she is swept up in a tornado and lands in a magical place called Oz  •  there she embarks on a journey of discovery, accompanied by her little dog Toto and three companions: a scarecrow, who is looking for a brain; a tin man, who is looking for a heart, and a lion, who is looking for courage  •  t...

[This episode originally aired on May 9, 2023]  Buddha nature, or “enlightened genes,” isn’t something outside of us that we need to construct or to import  • it is a force of awakening that is within us, and it is quite simple and quite natural  •  it is like the strong determination of children to learn and to develop; it’s almost a kind of discontent looking to awaken  •  traditional texts point to this inherent nature as the root cause of awakening  •  the second cause of awakening is the pivotal point where that cause from within meets a cause from without—when you meet a teacher or a sp...

[This episode originally aired on May 2, 2023]  Today we are exploring four traditional methods or practices we can use to awaken our enlightened genes  •  the first method is cultivating loving kindness, or maitri, which is a key theme in the mahayana; it is connected with the wish that all beings be happy, and that includes you  •  the second method is cultivating compassion, or karuna  •  while loving kindness looks into the nature of happiness, compassion looks into the nature and causes of suffering  •  the third method is cultivating sympathetic joy — a joy based on appreciating others' happiness and accomplishments  •  the fourth method is cultivating e...

[This episode originally aired on April 25, 2023]  In this episode we will be looking at the obstacles we might encounter in trying to awaken our enlightened genes, as well as situations that support their awakening  • Trungpa Rinpoche called the first obstacle intrinsic slavery: we become slaves to our schemes, to our work, to our possessions  •  the second obstacle is being unaware: having a limited kind of awareness which does not look beyond the superficial level of things  •  the third obstacle says that enlightened genes won't awaken in the midst of evil actions or harmful behavior  •  the fourth obstacle is sleepiness, which is similar...

[This episode originally aired on April 18, 2023]  Buddhists are always talking about awakening, but what does that actually mean?  •  Trungpa Rinpoche taught that what is being awakened are our "enlightened genes" — a term which implies that awakening is somewhat natural, somewhat part of our makeup  •  sometimes Tibetans use the analogy of an acorn: if you try to get an oak tree by planting a bean seed, it will never work; but if you plant an acorn, you get an oak tree, not anything else  •  in the same way when you plant a human, you end up with an awakened being  •  there are two tradi...

[This episode originally aired on April 11, 2023]  An important transition point on the Buddhist path occurs between the foundational stage, where we focus on our own development, and the mahayana tradition, where the focus is directed toward the cultivation of compassion and concern for others  •  what makes this vitally important transition possible is training in shamatha and vipashyana, or mindfulness and awareness  •  shamatha is about taming our mind; it is about cutting through mental speed, neurotic patterning, discursiveness, and distracted mind  •  shamatha enables us to be more present; it brings about a quality of gentleness or making friends with oneself, and frees us...

[This episode originally aired on April 4, 2023]  Meditation practice doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens in the context of our life, and our life situations can vary tremendously  •  in extreme situations it can be easy to lose our connection to practice  •  one extreme is when our situation is really cozy and going really well  •  the other extreme, which I would like to focus on here, is when our lives take a dramatic turn and we are faced with dire situations of pain and loss  •  the idea is to bring our practice to bear, no matter what the situation is  •  there's a sa...

[This episode originally aired on March 28, 2023]  Buddhism’s emphasis on facing the reality of suffering could lead to the perception that the Buddhist path is only focused on what's wrong; but the Buddha also taught how to free ourselves from suffering  •  facing the reality of suffering straightforwardly can actually be a tremendous relief  •  when I first encountered Buddhist teachings, I never went to a talk where people didn't just burst into laughter from time to time  •  there was a sense that you could laugh and find humor and lightness, even when discussing the heaviest of topics  •  joy is an essential part of B...

[This episode originally aired on March 21, 2023]  The teachings of the Buddha are often divided into three components: intelligence or discriminating awareness; discipline; and meditation  •  there can be so much emphasis on sitting practice that there is less discussion of the importance of cultivating knowledge and discipline — what it actually takes to put the teachings into action in our everyday life  •  being able to observe what is going on with some precision and insight is extremely important; this includes ordinary knowledge, self-knowledge, and psychological knowledge  •  Trungpa Rinpoche pointed out the difference between discriminating awareness and comfort-seeking mind  •  he talked about the earthy quality...

[This episode originally aired on March 14, 2023]  The great teacher Shantideva emphasized the importance of vigilance, of protecting our minds  •  at the same time, tremendous emphasis is placed on maintaining an open, welcoming mind  •  so what's the difference between vigilance and just closing our mind in a negative or unhelpful way?  •  one way of looking at this is to think of your mind as a house  •  inside your house are your children or maybe a safe with all your resources in it  •  someone knocks on the door, and you have to decide whether to let them in  •  you want to be willing to accommodate...

[This episode originally aired on March 7, 2023]  It may seem odd to talk about the benefits of “don't know mind” in a tradition that places such value on learning and on study, and the harm that comes from lack of knowledge, lack of awareness, lack of critical thinking  •  so how is don't know mind different from delusory mind or ignorance?  •  the main difference is that don't know mind is about opening out, whereas ignorance is about shutting down  •  Trungpa Rinpoche warned about developing a mind like an iron kettle, as though we could pour all sorts of teachings into that kettle and hold t...

[This episode originally aired on February 28, 2023]  The Buddhist path includes many methods for reminding us to wake up — from our blurriness, our sleepiness, and the busyness and distractedness of life  •  it's easy to get lost in the woods; reminders help us find our way back to the path  •  traditionally there are what are called the four basic or fundamental reminders  •  the first reminder is acknowledging the amazing opportunity of having this human life, how precious it is to be embodied in this particular realm of reality  •  the second reminder is the reality of death; it is a reminder about the reality that ev...

[This episode originally aired on February 21, 2023]  Is there a way to make a sane relationship with our bad deeds and our regrets?  •  it's not easy to face up to all that we've done; it's not easy to find a way between wallowing in guilt and evading responsibility  •  in the Buddhist monastic traditions, there is a practice that provides a way of directly facing and working with the harm we have caused  •  the starting point is remorse; we feel bad about what we have done, and we want to do something about it  •  remorse leads us to the second step: acknowledging our...

[This episode originally aired on February 14, 2023]  Images of the Buddha sitting in meditation posture give the impression that the buddhist path is quiescent and still; but actually it's a very dynamic, ever-evolving, and important journey  •  personally, I connect this idea of journey with a sense of something within us that we have lost and are trying to get back to  •  I think of this missing thing as our “heart of hearts”  •   it’s as though we are grieving the loss of something sweet and tender and vulnerable, a kind of childhood innocence that we have become estranged from  •  we learn over time to cove...

[This episode originally aired on February 7, 2023]  Early Buddhist meditators spent quite a lot of time alone in retreat in remote, rugged areas  •  as a result, they were very much in tune with the the five basic elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and space  •  they observed that everything inside is mirrored by what is outside, and everything outside is mirrored by what is inside  •  the earth element has the quality of being solid, embodied, unmoving  •  the water element has a quality of flowing, cleansing, and cohesion  •  the element of fire is connected with warmth, compassion, and burning through obstacles  •  the element of wind is po...

[This episode originally aired on January 31, 2023]  A common idea about the spiritual path is that it is punctuated by gigantic breakthroughs, by big revelations  •  but many deep and important insights don't come in that way; they come in through glimpses, which can be sudden or they can just kind of seep in  •  in some ways glimpses are similar to a jigsaw puzzle: we have all these pieces, and we have little insights that this piece fits into that, or this piece doesn't fit into that  •  we begin to put some things together and we kind of swim around and we don't real...