Refuge Recovery Podcast

Tonight's open forum began without a predetermined topic for meditation or discussion. Before the meditation started, participants were asked if they had any requests or questions about Buddhism or meditation practices. They were encouraged to suggest topics they wanted to be addressed, and these topics were then covered briefly.

This being the first Thursday of the new year, 2025. I thought I'd reflect a little and ask you to reflect a little on your intentions, your recovery, your plans and aspirations for this year.

This being the first Thursday of the new year, 2025. I thought I'd reflect a little and ask you to reflect a little on your intentions, your recovery, your plans and aspirations for this year.

I thought we would, look at this section of the book tonight. Back to the beginning of the book, right after the introduction, there's these pages called The Process page XI. There are three or four pages that in Refuge meetings, we read the first part of this. We read the first page about how we follow the traditional Buddhist system of the Four Noble Truths.

We read this in every meeting, but we only read it down to a sort of abbreviated version of it. So I thought I'd share it and then use this as the discussion starting on XII.

9 Levels of Experience

We're on the eighth factor tonight. Concentration, the importance of gathering our attention, learning to pay attention and the skill of concentration.

Refuge Recovery Talks—First Thursday of the Month at 5PM PST with Noah Levine Register here to join ➤ https://www.refugerecovery.org/monthly-dharma-talk All are welcome.

4th Foundation

Tonight we're on the fourth foundation which is actually the most detailed and complicated aspect of the mindfulness teachings. 

Refuge Recovery Talks—First Thursday of the Month at 5PM PST with Noah Levine Register here to join ➤ https://www.refugerecovery.org/monthly-dharma-talk All are welcome.

3rd Foundation

We already did the first foundation of mindfulness and the second foundation. So tonight's topic is the third foundation of mindfulness. In the Refuge Recovery meditations, we break down the 3rd foundation into 2 parts, the process and the content.

Refuge Recovery Talks—First Thursday of the Month at 5PM PST with Noah Levine Register here to join ➤ https://www.refugerecovery.org/monthly-dharma-talk All are welcome.

Tonight we're on the second foundation of mindfulness. These four foundations all work together. It's a little bit hard to separate them. Tonight we're going to cover the second foundation, which is bringing mindfulness, present time awareness to the feeling tone of our experience.

Refuge Recovery Talks—First Thursday of the Month at 5PM PST with Noah Levine Register here to join ➤ https://www.refugerecovery.org/monthly-dharma-talk All are welcome.

I've spent the last six months on this series of the Eightfold Path. Since we've been doing one a month, we're now on the seventh factor, mindfulness. This is core part of the Buddhist teaching and the core practice in Refuge Recovery.

Refuge Recovery Talks—First Thursday of the Month at 5PM PST with Noah Levine Register here to join ➤ https://www.refugerecovery.org/monthly-dharma-talk All are welcome.

This topic and aspect of the Buddha's teaching around how much effort it takes, how much is the appropriate effort, how much energy do we need to put into our path of recovery, to our meditation practice, to our renunciation practice, to our study, to our service. Every aspect of our life, like everything, probably none of our recovery, probably none of our practice is going to be effortless. It's all going to take some effort. We're going to have to apply some of our energy and effort to meditating, to defying the mind's suggestions, to renunciation. Even just not doing what we want to do also take some effort. Just “I have to resist craving and urges” takes some effort.

Refuge Recovery Talks—First Thursday of the Month at 5PM PST with Noah Levine Register here to join ➤ https://www.refugerecovery.org/monthly-dharma-talk All are welcome.

We'll talk about money, work and service. The Buddhist teachings on livelihood and the karma that we're creating at work. We'll also talk some about the importance of generosity, service and breaking our self centeredness through giving away some of our time and energy and resources.

Refuge Recovery Talks—First Thursday of the Month at 5PM PST with Noah Levine Register here to join ➤ https://www.refugerecovery.org/monthly-dharma-talk All are welcome.