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Wonderful & Marvelous: Recollection of the Buddha
In honor of Vesak, coming up this year on May 19, a series of talks on the Buddha themself, interwoven with some discussion of the traditional verses of praise we chant in our Refuge & Precepts Pūja. We’ll use as a framework this month a strange and beautiful sutta known as “Wonderful and Marvelous,” (Acchariya-abbhūta…
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Seeking the Deathless: chanting & stories of the Buddha for Vesak 2018
Vesak is the celebration of the Buddha’s birth, liberation, and death, falling this year on the late May full moon. We took a break from the social justice series we’re in the middle of to chant and hear stories remembering the life and insight of Siddhartha Gotama (mostly from the Lalitavistara Sūtra), who became the…
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Going for Refuge to Buddha, Dhamma, & Sangha
How the foundational Buddhist practice of Going for Refuge is more profound than we often think, and can be a simple but powerful ritual to support us on the path. https://seanfeitoakes.dreamhosters.com/talks/20170124-Satsang-Refuge.m4a
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Theravada Refuge & Precepts Pūjā
Every week at Satsang, we do a short chanting ceremony called a pūjā, or devotional ritual. We chant a few ancient verses in Pāli, the language of the early Buddhist texts. These verses are excerpts from a longer sequence of chants done daily in Theravāda monasteries, emphasizing the basic lay (non-monastic) practices of going for refuge…