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Dharma Talks
given at Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-07-21
If You Want the Moon
21:21
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Between beauty and terror lies the Middle Way, at times crushing, at last – transcendent. Can we receive all of life with the pure love of awakened awareness? Just listen and watch in silence. Open and understand the heart in pure presence – the way a valley receives a flood. To witness the truth of impermanence is to know there is nothing at all we can cling to in this vast universe. Rumi wrote, “If you want the moon, do not hide from the night. If you want a rose, do not run from its thorns. If you want love, do not hide from yourself.”
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-06-30
The Art of Harmlessness
22:58
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Ayya Medhanandi
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We humans share this journey of birth, old age, sickness and death. Sometimes we succumb to fear or sorrow; sometimes we are exhausted or disoriented as if lost on a perilous path. Seeing this universality of suffering and knowing its causes, we ask: "What will set us free?" With the lens of refined moral aptitude, in silent witness, we stop to listen and directly know for ourselves the inner joy and peace of true harmlessness. Patiently, our noble guides of benevolent compassion and wise reflection steer the heart to its liberation – awakening to Unconditional Love.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-06-02
Knowing Godness
15:02
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Was the Buddha a Buddhist? The Buddha was fully awakened, having realized the truth beyond convention, beyond worldly identities. We want that – to fully awaken; to understand our experience at its core through the purification of the heart. When the mind is completely content within itself, in pure awareness, gone beyond attachment to worldly perception, sensation or gratification, we can know a loving authentic opening to true consciousness, godness itself. We are that.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-05-12
The Buddha's Promise
23:39
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Ayya Medhanandi
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The human realm is ever fraught with greed and delusion, conflicted and loud in its extremes. These violations are just that – destroyers of our spiritual verve. As pilgrims of peace, we disarm them in the interior silence of the heart. Courageous, we stand our moral ground, resolved to hold the bar. Our faith, generosity and discernment rescue us from the flames of sensory fears and infatuations. There is giving up and letting go but the Buddha’s promise is true. Where kindness and compassion prevail, the heart knows unshakeable peace.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-04-21
A Ray of the Absolute
22:20
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Just as the sun is eclipsed by the moon passing over it, so the mind is submerged in 'totality' due to the veil of our human conditioning. But we can shatter that darkness by diving deeply with moral vigilance and wise attention into the silence of the mind. There we know suffering, how it begins and the exhilarating joy of witnessing its end in the vastness of the heart's inner dimensions. With unshakeable faith, insight, and understanding, we abide in that sacred space of pure awareness and unconditional love – like the sun freed from the shadow of the moon.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-04-05
Like the Sun Awakening the Lotus
32:20
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Throughout history, hatred, human violence and horrific sufferings have plagued the world. Truth is never diminished by these worldly conditions. So we feed the mind with what supports inner peace and awakening and not with thoughts of depression, disappointment, despair, or fear. What we most fear is unconditional love. That's not consent for nor approval of hateful conduct but rather a call to bear compassion – the most difficult love of all. Like the sun that gives warmth to all beings, the awakened mind does not differentiate. It does not choose one over another. It just gives light
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-02-10
In the Name of Wisdom
14:12
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Ayya Medhanandi
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What does it mean to be noble? As a daughter of the Buddha, I learn that no name can confer authority or self-respect, nor does opinion, tradition or entitlement bestow them, for as the Buddha wisely teaches, “One does not become a noble one by birth. It is by one's deeds that one attains to nobility.” Just so, the riches of our human journey are revealed in the fire of inner purification. Therein we find our true name. It is nothing less than the pure presence behind every name – the emptiness in which all personal identity dissolves. And where only unconditional love abides.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2024-01-07
What is Refuge in Buddha Anyway?
29:24
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Stay true to seeing with wisdom and be compassionate to yourself – then, gradually to all beings. Preserve, treasure, grow and rejoice in the moral fabric of your true nature and know its incomparable radiant light. But first, we must have complete trust in the Buddha as our guide. Then we set our compass to the heart's journey of transcendence on the Noble Eightfold Path. Reflecting on the benevolence of the Buddha's awakening, we walk in gratitude, courage, joy and empowerment.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2023-12-22
Darkness Just Before Dawn
28:16
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Could we really love if we lived forever? There is no true love without suffering. This is revealed through our mortality and the impermanence of all conditioned things. We are not the body but its fragility reflects our true essence. Just as when a candle melts, the flame burns. Just as the sun arises out of the darkest night, so too, our awakening to truth is grounded in understanding the Buddha's Noble Truth of suffering. We witness how suffering begins, how it ends, and how to free ourselves from it. As the heart breaks open, we are waking up to the truth of what we are, nothing less than unconditional love. In the words of Victor Frankl, “To give light, we must endure burning.”
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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2023-12-17
A Jet Plane To Nibbana
23:04
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Ayya Medhanandi
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Across millenia, the Buddha speaks of his awakening – teaching us how to take refuge, how to be fearless, how to walk the Middle Way, how to understand suffering, and how to know what to trust. Fear is the opposite of trust. So be willing to relinquish concepts and questions and let yourself live into the answers day by day where fear can end – there in the pure sanctuary of the heart. For this, we learn to have compassion even for those who kill us. But we must give up what is not trustworthy. With courage, compassion, and clear awareness of what we face now, stay quietly present and listen carefully. The truth will speak, and we shall understand.
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Sati Saraniya Hermitage
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