Letting in the Joy

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...

In the Season of Fire

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.

A Place Between: What’s Along the Middle Way?

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...

Beginning Again

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

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....

Forgiveness on the Path to Recovery

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...

Long Enduring Mind

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

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...

Understanding No Self and a World Based on Identities

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.