Dharma Glimpses with Judy Lief

In this episode, I'd like to focus on meditation in action, and particularly on speech  •  in Buddhism there is a tremendous respect for the spoken word  •  speech is powerful; it can be beneficial, …

Loving kindness – known in Sanskrit as maitri – is a cornerstone of the entire Buddhist path  •  without loving kindness, no matter how much you meditate or how much you study the dharma, it will lac…

When Trungpa Rinpoche spoke about the importance of joining intellect and intuition, he was referring to combining learning and study with the practice of meditation  •  the practice of meditation he…

When you go to a play, you see people who are pretending to be other people; they learn their lines and move about in scripted ways  •  they perform on a stage, and in front of the stage is an audien…

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…

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 …

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 experie…

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 taught …

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 th…

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 t…

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 …

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 me…

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 …

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…

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 pan…

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…

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 …

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…

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…

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 em…