July 5: Here and Now
July 8: Bringing Peace, Avoiding Conflict
July 12: This was our last Dhamma talk by Ayya Brahmavara. She is now moving to Dhammadharini for the Vassa. Her talk was titled Entering the Stream.
July 15: The Quick Way to Awakening (1). This is a teaching on Sutta Nipata 4.14 This sutta lists 30 qualities that if skillful and developed or unskillful and abandoned, then Awakening will follow quickly. Bonus: Here is a beautiful talk by Ayya Medhanandi that touches on some of the qualities mentioned above: Redemption.
July 22: Part Two of "The Quick Way to Awakening".
July 26: Things resulting from causes and conditions is a key teaching of the Buddha. The elaborated teaching of this is called Dependent Origination or Paticca Samupada. It contains 12 steps that explain the round of rebirth in samsara. Analysis of these 12 steps is called Nidana. DN 15 Mahanidana Sutta is one of the teachings on this topic. Tonight's talk is from DN 21 Sakka's Questions to the Buddha which covers the three core aspects of Dependent Origination: desire, clinging and the resulting existence of mind states. And the core message of the sutta is how to decide on what happinesses to pursue, what actions to do, what speech to say and what thoughts to think. The answer is to pursue those things that increase wholesome factors like mindfulness, compassion, stillness, peace and that decrease unwholesome factors such as greed and anger.