Pariyatti

Chapter 14 - John Muir from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. Muir made harmony his orienting point and built a lifestyle around it. He refused teaching positions at Harvard and the Boston Academy of Science, and instead cleaved to the environment he wrote about. John Muir’s intimacy with nature deepened to mental states of fusion, during which he lost his sense of individual identity to blend with the whole. “You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a campfire. Presently, you lose consciousness of your own separate existence; you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature.” By “nature,” Muir always meant one mood: harmony in every thing, harmony over and over. Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 34 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (16 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 13 - Peace In Nature from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. Nature is a stern guru. Those who are not simultaneously knowing themselves as they study nature will be shaken into rude awareness of the great dark truths of the natural world and of their own psyches. Just as nature is the realm of light and beaches and bluebirds, it is the realm of the shadow winter, storms, cold, and death. Immersion in the natural world doesn’t provide a sanctuary from human suffering; it augments and clarifies the deepest origins of distress. When that augmentation is a step toward confrontation and resolution, it is also a step toward inner peace. Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 15 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (7 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 12 - Mahatma Gandhi's Mantric Collage from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. India's great political and religious leader, Mahatma Gandhi, intended his monumental public life to be merely an extension of his inner cultivation of peace. Foremost among Gandhi’s peaceful qualities were his reverence for world spiritual literature, his awareness that words transmit feelings as well as ideas, his steady immersion in peaceful language, and his use of linguistic vibrations to transform his followers. On your own path, peace means listening and speaking as if your words and actions were playing one instrument in the orchestra of the universe. What you say, read, listen to, will influence how your molecules and nervous system dance, and what messages you will conduct and broadcast. Whitman’s poetry may spring you free of foreshortened time; and Gandhi’s dhuns might, if you could reconstruct them, prepare you for noble social action. The words that you absorb will be important contributors to the peace that you will transmit, intentionally or not. Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 22 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (11 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 11 - Walt Whitman’s Poetic Peace from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "A hundred years after his death, Whitman’s life transpires the atmosphere of outdoor freedom. He is known as America’s pagan poet, who set the style of bohemian bard, beckoning to listeners today from old photographs that capture him in his rustic livery, cocked Stetson, open collar, and spirit of dusty rambles on timeless summer days. The story of Whitman’s relationship with his literary ancestors is not only instructive but intriguing, since he intentionally distorted fact to sculpt a poetic truth. Both what he initially intended to hide, and what his writing and later confessions reveal, highlight the role of the vibration of language in his journey toward poise, since Whitman’s life, for all its breadth and creativity, was an increasingly dynamic, selectively honed pilgrimage into peace." Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 34 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (34 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 10 - Speak Your Peace from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "If I could do one thing for my society today, it would be to create community in which everyone was encouraged to speak from the heart, and to listen to the messages of others. I have spent most of my life listening to varieties of justified complaints that no one listens to or understands. Unfortunately, we live in a non-listening, mass-market, person-inattentive society. The emphasis on efficiency, productivity, pleasure, and hurry that pervade society leave little room for building personal relationships around resonant communication of feelings. We live in a society uniquely devoid of conversation about the backdrop of infinite reality, through which every shaft of light that falls on us has passed. We see the tint of this passage everywhere, but we suffer from derealization when we try to speak about its presence in our lives. Yet this cultural repression is changeable, every time we ourselves dare to refer in our talk to the reality always present around us." Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 22 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (11 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 9 - Peace Is the Vibration of Language from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "Words of peace educate us, temper us through rational inquiry, inspire us with what has already been attained, and transform us in the mere receptivity we have to their tremolo. The practice of imbibing words of peace will create within you a hum of peace. Syllabic peace sends transforming shafts of sound shivering through its listeners. Our hearts continue to beat in rhythmic sympathy." Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 6 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (3 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 8 - The Shakers: The Benefits and Limits of Selectivity from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "The Shakers are an example. Paragons of selectivity, they produced one of the great outpourings of spiritual peace in American history, yet their heritage is masked by an intensely ambivalent reception that speaks to the essential tension which selectivity addresses. The Shakers deserve our attention as exemplars of both the strengths and pitfalls involved in selectivity. Their example highlights how you can intensify your relationship to peace every day via rigorous selectivity, but also how selectivity can be overdone and become paradoxically un-selective. The Shakers command our attention around the question: Just how much selectivity is peace-bearing, and how much is stifling?" Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 27 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (13 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 7 - Selectivity in Contemporary Lives from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "In a complex society, a certain level of intricacy must be added into the life of each citizen in order to be able to functionally mesh with multiple social and economic gears. Simplicity in a farmer doesn’t consist in planting a monoculture. Selectivity doesn’t mean constricted, impoverished, or inviable living. Selectivity means conscious choice of what is important, necessary, and salubrious, with conscious relinquishment of what is diluting, distracting, and obfuscating. The choice is personal: live well, plant your crops, be prosperous but not festooned." Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 30 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (15 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 6 - Selectivity and the American Family from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "Our children have lost permission to dwell in their spacious reverie of newness. They no longer inhabit the structureless domes of uninterrupted afternoons. In order for us to function efficiently, we need them to be busy. We also—out of well-intended concern—want to prepare them to deal competently with our gadget-dense sphere, so that, almost from the start, children are propelled into a high rhythmic froth. This could be a sprightly animation if it were balanced by an equal but opposite emphasis on inward serenity and outward harmony, which would provide an orchestrating principle, a focus to the swirl, not precluding skillful assertion, but orienting it. The receptive neurology of a child can catch and hold real experiences in contemplative stillness and inner joy." Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 20 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (11 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 5 - Peace Is Selective from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "In Part II, I discussed the dynamic quality of peace, the action of returning, like a compass needle to the north. Selecting peace is different, more like writing a song. You quell the sounds of the traffic around you, and a halting tune emerges. If you let it rise and expand, but at the same time contain it, you may happen upon the invisible coherence of melody, which then flows like a stream, bounded and directional. Melody isn’t merely pretty sound, but an organized, integrated channel. You have to push aside distraction—not just noise, but even tangential charm—in order to hear a melody ripple downhill within you." Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 7.5 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (4 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 4 - Scott and Helen Nearing from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "In this section of the book, I am focusing your attention on the need for a dynamic relationship to your mood and your idea of peace. Lifetimes of peace derive from flexible, problem-solving commitments that reassert peace as the core goal in the solution of your current problem, whether that problem be inner or outer, hunger or war. One intriguing example of this dynamic process is the life of Scott and Helen Nearing, organic gardeners who inspired thousands of people to live lives honed by simplicity and peacefulness...." Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 26 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (13 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 3 - Peace Is Dynamic from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. Cultivating inner peace doesn’t eliminate problems, but it facilitates overcoming them with a particular flavor. You can’t strive for uniform bliss in the name of peace. The pursuit of inner peace is a self-regenerating way of life. As long as we live, we will be spun with demand and action, but we can design an orienting axis of stability within the swirl. Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 19 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (9 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 2 - Peace Is a Personal Encounter: Juan and Kathleen Mascaró from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. "The possibility of a life devoted to personal peacefulness that then atomizes outward to others is conveyed from one person to another. For a sustaining image of such a life, I am indebted to Juan and Kathleen Mascaró. They drew me like a magnet into their world. This is how I met them." Dr. Paul Fleischman Massachusetts, USA 2020 23 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (11 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

Chapter 1 - The Quest for Inner Peace from Cultivating Inner Peace by Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. The cultivation of inner peace is as rational and orderly as any other aspect of the human condition, and pertains equally to all of us despite our differing starting gates, nervous systems, and life experiences. Out of my own life, and the lives of teachers and friends and those I have been privileged to know professionally, and out of the lives of great souls who left their footprints for us to follow, I would like to provide pragmatic, concrete guidance toward inner peace and radiant harmony. My examples will be drawn from real people, whole lives filled with the dynamic of human suffering and relief. I will tell the stories of people I know (often disguised or over lapped with other people to preserve privacy), or people whose lives are richly documented in historical record. Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. Massachusetts, USA 2020 37 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (18 MB) Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore.

An ethical life is composed of purity of action, purity of speech and purity of livelihood. Upholding it requires not only determination but proper comprehension as well. From the perspective of abstaining (vārittaṃ) to the perspective of performing (cārittaṃ), this talk aims to support the understanding of the deeper aspects of Sīla. Integrating selected quotes from the direct words of the Buddha and the commentaries, it highlights the different aspects of Sīla, proceeding in the order of the precepts. It addresses the detailed definition of each precept, the underlying volition of the act to be performed, its manifestation and its results. Deeper Aspects of Sīla by Klaus Nothnagel Tel Aviv, Israel February 28, 2020 83 minutes Listen to Streaming Audio Your browser does not support the audio element. Download Audio (40 MB) Download transcript (298kb) Copyright, 2020 Klaus Nothnagel There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore. May all beings be happy!