Buddhist Recovery Network

The Breath of Recovery
2022-02-06 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | BRN Academy
Mindfulness of breathing is both the most basic meditative tool and an advanced path to enlightenment, as described by the Buddha. Kevin will discuss the range of uses of mindful breathing, from simple stress-reduction to the higher insights and their value on the path of recovery.
Bio:

Kevin Griffin is a Buddhist teacher and author in the Theravada tradition. He is a co-founder of the Buddhist Recovery Network and teaches internationally across Buddhist traditions. He has been a Buddhist practitioner and in recovery for over three decades. His teacher training was at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California, where he still teaches his flagship Dharma and Recovery class. Besides teaching at Buddhist and other spiritual centers, Kevin works with treatment centers and has consulted with leading addiction researchers.His books include:A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of RecoveryOne Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve StepsBuddhism & The Twelve Steps WorkbookRecovering Joy: A Mindful Life After Addiction
Living Kindness: Buddhist Teachings for a Troubled World
His CDs include:Recovery One Breath at a TimeOne Breath, Twelve StepsLaughing Buddha (music)

Website: https://www.kevingriffin.net/

We Were Made for These Times: Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss and Disruption
2022-03-06 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy

Looking for the Truth - The 'secret' facts of life hidden in plain view
2022-04-03 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Human beings are not meant to be ‘happy’. We are compelled to keep chasing pleasure and to avoid pain. The Buddha presented a view of our existence as being a fragile process, ever changing, impermanent, inconstant, uncertain, subject to unavoidable pain and completely impersonal.
And, he also offered us insights and tools that encourage and facilitate the liberating possibility of seeing the basic patterns of things as they really are. But, the choice is ours whether we follow his suggestions or not!

Letting in the Joy
2022-05-01 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Our practice and our recovery are often about recognizing our struggles and where we are stuck. Although it’s necessary that we do this, sometimes we miss the joy that is also present in our lives. Joy is one of the Seven Awakening Factors and an important experience on the path to liberation. In this talk Mary will offer suggestions on how to recognize and cultivate joy in your life, even in the midst of difficulties.

The Bravery of Mindfulness Awareness Meditation
2022-06-05 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy

Seeing ourselves in the face of suffering, loss, trauma, and joy
2022-07-03 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy

In the Season of Fire
2022-08-07 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
The teaching is an introduction of the Fire sermon from the teachings of the Buddha and how it is relating to these current times.

Practicing In Sangha: Diversity & Belonging
2022-09-04 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy

A Place Between: What's Along the Middle Way?
2022-11-06 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
The Buddha revealed to us an eight-fold path as a way to work with and move beyond suffering, a way to be in recovery from the three poisons in all their many forms. How do we embrace this middle way of being with curiosity, awareness and engagement, and what does it reveal to us along the way? Let’s notice the qualities of the change that comes as a result of our efforts. Let’s practice widening our view to see the distances we’ve traveled, how we’re becoming, what energizes our practice and gives life to our regular steps along the way.

Beginning Again
2023-01-01 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
As the New Year starts, we renew our commitment to recovery and practice. This talk will focus on the importance of persistence and continuity in practice and recovery. The importance of finding joy in the simple experiences of life, in breathing, in walking, in being with others.

All You Need is Love
2023-02-05 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
In our world it seems that hate and anger are so prevalent it can feel overwhelming at times. In our own lives, it’s also quite easy for us to slip into aversion and othering while finding it fully justified. In this talk Mary discusses the need to name love as a foundation of our practice. The Buddha gave us the Metta Sutta as well as other teachings on how to be with a mind imbued with lovingkindness and compassion. This foundation of love will allow us to fully open to the world and to ourselves, letting go of the need to create barriers. Turning towards love is the answer.

Forgiveness on the Path to Recovery
2023-03-05 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
So many of us come into sobriety with a really poor relationship with ourselves and so heavily burdened with resentments towards ourselves and others. By practicing forgiveness, not in a theistic Christian outside ourselves way, but as self empowering and self healing way to start to let go, to change our relationship with, and to be truly free. It is imperative for forgiveness to be infused in all our practices and our path so that we can be liberated, experiencing the difference between just sobriety and the big Recovery, with a capital R!

Long Enduring Mind
2023-04-02 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Recovery and dharma practice go through many ups and downs. How do we sustain our spiritual lives through the seasons of life?

The Karma Garden—A missing tool of Buddhist Recovery for process addictions
2023-05-07 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Do you struggle with renouncing your compulsive behavior? Thomas has readapted a vital tool for process addictions into Buddhist framework, which they call “The Karma Garden: Watering Seeds of Self-Care.”
This tool helps you:

Define the behaviors you’re renouncing (the insatiable cravings and damage of hungry ghosts)
Keep alert of risky conditions (-Bad Karma seeds / Suffering)
Fill your cup with healthy self-care choices (+Good Karma / Healing)

https://insighttimer.com/ang

https://rd.rocks

Understanding No Self and a World Based on Identities
2023-06-04 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
For this session, in honor of LGBTQ+ Pride, Lev will read a poem from the book Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices and talk about why it’s important to honor who we all are, or identify, while also understanding the emptiness of us.

The Basic Pattern of Things: Managing Expectations
2023-07-02 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
The Buddha’s First Truth or Realisation was “Life is painful and then you die.” If this is true, then how do we respond to the disappointments of life and the certainty of death? This session will explore how we are conditioned to protect, promote and satisfy a ‘self’ which can never be satisfied. As the Buddha says “we are the slaves of craving”. Our wise-heartedness meditation will cultivate an appropriate attitude to the vicissitudes of life.

Committing to Change
2023-08-06 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy

The Zen Way of Recovery
2023-09-03 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Laura will be sharing from her recently released book The Zen Way of Recovery: An Illuminated Path Out of the Darkness of Addiction, a collection of dharma talks on teachings that are congruent with recovery. The twin paths of Zen practice and recovery have evolved and sustained her since she got sober in 1985.
Here is a link to the book: https://www.shambhala.com/zen-way-of-recovery.html

Kate Johnson - October 2023
2023-10-01 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy

Recovering the Heart during distress times
2023-11-05 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy

My Journey Into Recovery and Dharma
2023-12-03 10:00 - 11:00
Since this is my first time speaking at the BRN Academy, I thought I would share some stories about my personal journey with you. I’ve been in recovery from drugs and alcohol since 1987, and there have been plenty of ups and downs along the way. Finding the practice of insight meditation and the Buddha’s path of liberation gave me a new sense of possibility in my life after years of being clean and sober in 12 step meetings.

I finally learned how to be more self-reliant. As the Buddha instructed in one sutta: “Dwell with yourselves as your own island, with yourselves as your own refuge, with no other refuge; dwell with the Dhamma as your island, with the Dhamma as your refuge, with no other refuge…” Of course, Sangha (community) is vitally important, too.

Topic: My Journey Into Recovery and Dharma
2023-12-03 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy

Bringing the New Year in with Wisdom
2024-01-07 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Every day is a new year, and it’s an opportunity to do something different because the past has gone . However so many of us hold onto the past or cling onto a future that hasn’t even arrived. Today we will explore letting go and discovering a freedom in the present moment. Let’s leave behind our addictive and compulsive behaviors and face the reality of now!

Mary Stancavage - Finding Ease in the Present Moment -
2024-02-04 10:00 - 11:00
Finding ease in the present moment can sometimes feel like an impossible task – there is so much going on in the world and in our own lives and it’s easy to become overwhelmed. When things are challenging, we tend to fall into familiar patterns of reactivity which keep us either stuck in this overwhelm or getting lost in stories that don’t serve us. In this talk Mary will discuss different ways we get entangled and how we can get unstuck and move towards both equanimity and ease, regardless of what’s going on.

marystancavage.org
Seven Factors of Awakening

BRN March Teaching
2024-03-03 10:00 - 11:00

Vince Cullen - Higher Truths & Advanced Understandings
2024-03-03 10:00 - 11:00
The Buddha’s first official teaching was given to ‘noble ones’, that is the five ascetics who trained alongside Gautama, seeking an end to the suffering of this existence and an end to future rebirths.
The way out of suffering, the Buddha said, was the Middle Way; the middle path between the extremes of sensual existence. The first and most critical step of the Middle Way is appropriate understanding. And the first things we need to understand correctly are the realities and possibilities of being human.
Join me to explore what an advanced understanding of the ‘true’ realities of existence are and what an appropriate response might be in both our mental attitude and our engagement with the spectrum of sensuality.

Kevin Griffin - Deepening Attunement to Body, Feelings, and Mind
2024-04-07 10:00 - 11:00
In this talk we will explore how recovery and mindfulness can make us more sensitive internally and externally. Such increasing awareness allows us to let go on profound levels and wake up to our inherent wisdom and wholeness.

Venerable Pannavari Bhikkhuni - Loosening the Pain of Regret
2024-05-05 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
The pain of regret can bind us. We will discuss the ways we can unbind through the Dharma.

How 'Not Wanting' is the Key
2024-06-02 10:00 | BRN Academy
Next BRN Academy teaching with Walt Opie — June 2nd 2024 @ 10:00am US Pacific Time

I once heard the teacher Joseph Goldstein say on a retreat that what we are really practicing is “not wanting.” He added that this is the Third Noble Truth (of the Four Noble Truths). In this talk I will explore how I understand this and what it has meant to my practice and in my recovery process. Certainly when I was still drinking and using drugs I never once recall thinking that “not wanting” was the way to go.

Gary Sanders - Just assume the answer to every question is compassion
2024-07-07 10:00 - 11:00
“Just assume the answer to every question is compassion” – Father Greg Boyle in his book Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

In Buddhism, compassion is the appropriate response to pain and whether we are new to sobriety and suffering the special kind of newcomer pain, or in long term recovery and suffering the pain of everyday life…compassion is ALWAYS the answer.

My hope this BRN Academy session is to explore some areas in recovery that aren’t talked about a whole lot: interpersonal relationships, secondary addictions, untreated or under treated trauma, and other topics that all can be proactively prepared for and met will compassion.
