Buddhist Recovery Network

Emotional Sobriety: Comfortable in Your Own Skin
2020-08-02 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | BRN Academy
Facebook Event Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/1400167713509983/

Gary Sanders lives in Portland, OR. He is originally from the Los Angeles area, where he was the founder of SCV Mindfulness and led up to three weekly meditation groups for over 5 years. He was empowered to lead Buddhist meditation and dharma groups at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. He helped, from the ground level, to found Refuge Recovery, a Buddhist based recovery program for all addictions, which has now spread worldwide. After moving to Portland, Gary was asked to join the teaching staff at Portland Insight Meditation Community. Gary travels frequently and teaches daylongs and workshops all over North America and now endorses the Recovery Dharma program.

Reflection on Recovery
2020-07-05 10:00 - 11:00
Having just passed the milestone of 35 years sober, exactly half his life, Kevin looks back on his own path and the lessons he has learned as a clean and sober Buddhist.

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.

Meditation | Practice for Challenging Times
2020-06-07 10:00 - 11:00
We will offer a meditation and an opportunity to be together in Sangha, with an emphasis on sustaining practice in these challenging times. Please join us this Sunday, June 7th, led by Robin Smith.

Grounding in Uncertainty
2020-05-03 10:00 - 11:00
“Nothing in the whole universe is comparable to the mind or can take its place. Everything is mind-made.” _Ayya Kheme
I will guide our meditation on the cultivation of kindness and establishing your place of refuge during meditation so that you may begin to train the mind in stillness and peace. Now more than ever, the medicine of the Buddhadharma can help heal our mind-hearts and body by establishing a practice of the essentials in concentration and mindfulness.

Carol Cano, M.A. began her practice over 30 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She has completed a myriad of training programs at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and is currently participating in their Retreat Teacher Training. Carol is a core teacher and was a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in Philippines. Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along indigenous wisdom and Earth-based practices. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.

Effortless Mindfulness for Addiction Recovery: One Glimpse at a Time
2020-04-05 10:00 - 11:00
The Effortless Mindfulness approach to addiction draws on Buddhist meditation from Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism. Effortless Mindfulness is a direct approach that considered an advanced, yet simple way to access our true nature and treat suffering at its root. The 2 main premises are: craving is caused by living from our small separate sense of self and there is an already installed awakened consciousness that we can learn to shift into and live from.

The main practice is small glimpses many times a day, rather than long periods of meditation. Rather than focusing and concentrating to calm our minds we begin by opening awareness to a spacious and pervasive subtle level of awareness based knowing. At this time of challenge we will learn simple effortless mindfulness practices as a way to shift out of our addictive mind and into our heart mind.

The Way of Effortless Mindfulness

Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW is author of the award-winning book, The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. He is a licensed psychotherapist and recognized leader in the field of meditation and awakening. He is the founder of the non-profit, Open-Hearted Awareness Institute and has worked in community mental health, established homeless shelters and counseled family members of 9/11. Loch graduated from Columbia University and received a fellowship to study in Sri Lanka and India. Loch collaborates with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU in the study of how awareness training can enhance compassion and wellbeing. Loch is dedicated to reducing suffering and supporting people to live from open-hearted awareness. Loch is known for his warm sense of humor, and his trust that awakening is the next natural stage of development. He teaches the advanced, yet simple, nondual pointers and direct methods of effortless mindfulness, informed by psychology and social justice. Loch lives in New York City with his wife Paige and their cat Duffy. Info at www.lochkelly.org

Facebook Event Link

Add to Google Calendar

Perfect As We Are: A Self Compassion Practice
2020-03-01 10:00 - 11:00
In this session we will release self-doubt and/or self-blame, and engage in a practice of self-love and self-forgiveness.

Fresh “Lev” White is a love and compassionate activist. He offers mindfulness, coaching, mediation, and diversity trainings as tools for shifting towards more authentic, conscious and passionate living. He teaches and writes about how love and self-compassion are the ultimate gateways to loving and understanding others; thus, healing our communities, and our planet.
As a coach and Founder of Affirmative Acts Consulting, Lev supports executives, entrepreneurs, artists and other coaches with achieving their goals. Through value alignment, offering accountability and helping to create individual practices of self-care, and self-compassion, his clients have successfully improved their management skills, founded organizations, and taken leadership roles in new executive and director positions. Through the practice of mindfulness, Lev helps clients see clearly through their fears, and improve their emotional responses to challenging situations, which supports strengthening their efficiency and expanding their creativity, in all areas of their life.
Lev has offered over 200 diversity trainings in the Bay Area and beyond. He earned facilitation skills through his coaching certification, and an extensive leadership training program, each through the Co-Active Training Institute (formally known as The Coaches Training Institute) in 2011. He was trained on delivering LGBTQIA+ Ally trainings by CUAV in 2002, and in 2005 became a Certified Trainer through Out and Equal Workplace Advocates.”

Concrete Beds and Wooden Pillows... Waking Up the Hard Way (or Finding Insight but not Serenity)
2020-02-02 10:00 - 11:00
Sixteen years ago, I sat my first 10-day silent ‘Anapansati’ retreat at Wat Suan Mokkh monastery in southern Thailand. Wat Suan Mokkh has a separate retreat centre famous for its basic accommodation which includes concrete beds and wooden pillows. There, from a seeming inability to meditate came a small but ultimately profound and eventually life-changing understanding. At the time I might have called this unexpected understanding an ‘Insight’ but right now I would say that it lacked ‘Mindfulness’ and at the time it didn’t lead to ‘Serenity’!
The Buddha says “…for the direct knowledge, for the full understanding, for the utter destruction, for the vanishing, for the fading away, for the cessation, for the giving up, for the relinquishment of hatred, delusion, anger, hostility, envy, miserliness, deceitfulness, arrogance, intoxication these two things are to be cultivated. Which two? Serenity and insight.”
Together, Serenity and Insight can bring an end to greed, an end to hatred and an end of ignorance, including all of the countless other intoxicating inclinations.
But both Serenity and Insight need to be supported by Right Mindfulness.
When we cultivate Serenity and Insight with Mindfulness, we open up new ways of seeing the self, new ways of seeing the world, and new ways of seeing ourselves in the world.
It is said that we are all living in a dream, that we are all asleep, we are all under a spell, an enchantment that blinds us to the inherent biases, distortions and dissonances that are deeply embedded in fundamentally and simply being human; in being ourselves.
The Buddha says that to find liberation, we must become disenchanted; we must break the spell in order to reveal what has been hidden from us. You do not have to sleep on concrete beds and wooden pillows to wake up to how things really are!
Please join me on Sunday, February 2, for some Mindfulness, some Serenity and maybe even some Insight at the Buddhist Recovery Academy.

Generosity: Transforming the Heart
2020-01-05 10:00 - 11:00
As we embark into a new year, we will explore the importance of cultivating generosity (d?na) and gratitude (kataññuta) and turning our intentions toward the interrelationship of the two. The practice of generosity is at the foundation of Buddhist teachings. At its essence, dana is radical because it is the practice of giving freely without an expectation of receiving something in return and of realizing our interconnection to all that is. Dana is a trusting step, confidence that allows us to let go and open to life. Kara will discuss the nature of dana, how it can be practiced, and its connection to the path of liberation.

Watch the Triggers: The Festive Season is Here
2019-12-01 10:00 - 11:00
Top up on tips and coping mechanisms to deal with the holidays. Do the festive season with a sense of freedom and joy.

Breaking Free of Habits
2019-11-03 10:00 - 11:00
During this talk Martine will look at the habits that bind us and stop our potential for wisdom and compassion manifesting fully. She will explore the meditative tools found in the Vipassana tradition like mindfulness of the breath, sounds and feeling tones to show how we can engage creatively with our habits and transform them into positive functions.

Noticing Tracking and Shifting Perception
2019-10-06 10:00 - 11:00
There is a correlation between our inner state of being and our outer circumstances. By noticing our inner sensations and thoughts, tracking them to witness their changes, we make the unconscious conscious and can hold the inner and the outer experiences in an attitude of expanded focus. Observing our own continuously evolving experience centers us in reality and allows us to nourish whatever arises with less fear and more love. Developing an increased capacity for resiliency allows for a shift in perception toward a more loving state of being in which to create our reality. In this webinar we will discover our own organic wisdom to notice patterns, track changes and transform limited perceptions. Rather than a constant search for that elusive something out there, we turn attention within to feel for what wants to emerge.
Noticing thoughts, stories and sensations and tracking them to observe positive changes as they happen can shift our perception, and create greater clarity and meaning in life.

Kara Haney - September 2019
2019-09-01 10:00 - 11:00

Recovery Is Now, Awareness Is the Key
2019-08-04 10:00 - 11:00
Joan has had personal experience with alcohol addiction, a fingerbiting compulsion (classified as an impulse-control disorder), compulsive thinking, and depression. She does not believe there is one recovery model that fits everyone, and she encourages people to find what works for them. What she offers is an approach rooted in open awareness – giving nonjudgmental attention to the whole happening that we call ‘addiction’ or ‘compulsion’ or ‘depression,’ without trying to change it, but simply shedding light on it. She also stresses the liberating recognition that both our apparent imperfections and the stormy weather in life are often essential to evolutionary growth and transformation, and that the light and the dark go together and cannot be pulled apart. Joan does not consider herself a Buddhist and does not belong to any tradition, but she has spent time with a number of Buddhist teachers, including Charlotte Joko Beck, Steve Hagen, Anam Thubten and Mel Weitsman, and her main teacher, Toni Packer, was a former Zen teacher who left the tradition behind to work in a more open way.

Living an Authentic Life
2019-07-07 10:00 - 11:00
A life free from craving, addictions and compulsions isn’t just about avoiding intoxicants, it invites the opportunity to live a full and authentic life with creativity and joy. This isn’t just a possibility. Research suggests that although people in recovery from substance misuse often suffer more in the first year, in the longer term they are on average happier than the general population. Could this be because recovery demands effort, self-reflection and a willingness to change? We will explore how we can use these qualities on the Buddha’s path as a self-study and training programme that shines a light on the mistakes we make so that we can give them up and live life on life’s terms. Living an authentic life, in harmony with the Dharma is a life of peace and joy. Please join me as we explore this together.

Trauma, Addiction and Self-Regulation
2019-06-02 10:00 - 11:00
Trauma, whether connected to early childhood, an event as an adult or to social oppression, changes our nervous system, our physiological responses to life and impacts our self image, relational capacities, perception and self regulatory abilities. It is, in my view, a core underlying cause for the arising of addiction patterns. Looking through the trauma lense, addiction could be viewed as a means of regulating the underlying pervasive dis-regulation associated with addiction. Therefore “recovery” involves “recovering” or more likely developing self regulatory capacities. What we learn in Meditation is that where we direct or attention has a profound impact on the way we feel. In this session I’ll give an overview of trauma and how it functions and offer a few simple attention based or reflective exercises that support regulation of the nervous system. With trauma, self regulatory capacities are lost or never developed. And it is, in my view one of the core causal factors in addiction Often people with a history of trauma will have extra challenges that require additional tools and a different framework for how to think about what it means to be present without overwhelm.

Racism In The Buddhist Sangha
2019-05-05 10:00 - 11:00

Letting Go of Our Stories
2019-04-07 10:00 - 11:00
As soon as we’re born we’re faced with what life throws at us and we develop ways of coping that may or may not be beneficial. We’re also bombarded with messages from family, friends, school and society at large about who we are and what we should or shouldn’t be. These habits and messages become embedded and we may not even be aware of them, but they influence us on a daily basis. This is what the Buddha means when he talks about our conditioning. This conditioning can harden into the unwise stories we believe; craving and addiction are a destructive way of handling these beliefs.
In order to move towards freedom we have to wake up to our conditioning and disentangle it. Slowing down the mind and taking a step back to see the impersonal nature of the mind and developing a deep intimacy with our experience is how we move toward letting go of the craving and addiction. This talk will offer ways to examine our stories and the baggage we carry with us and investigate how to let them go in order to live a more liberated life.

The Pearl in Sorrow's Hand
2019-03-03 10:00 - 11:00
I have recently been considering the nature of ‘Dukkha’ or ‘suffering’ or ‘stress’ in a Buddhist context, particularly how it plays itself out in my life.
One ancient talk goes along the lines… “Now what, friends, is the noble truth of stress? Birth is stressful, illness is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful…”
Birth, sickness, old-age and death are all unavoidable… and undeniably stressful.
I visited one of my favourite aunts in Cork last month. She has advanced dementia, so she doesn’t know who anyone is, and she must have all of her personal care provided for her. She was being cared for by her 82-year old husband and surrounded and supported by a large loving family taking care of her every need.
It was inspiring to see her held in so much love. But it was equally sad to see a once vibrant wife, mother, grandmother, aunt and good friend as a mere shadow — almost unrecognisable — of her former ‘self’.
The truth of ‘birth, sickness, old-age and death’ is the usual description of universal suffering given by the Buddha, and I sometimes forget that the full definition of Dukkha is more than that, quite literally, the complete explanation goes…
“Now what, friends, is the noble truth of stress? Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful; separation from the loved is stressful; not getting what is wanted is stressful…”
So, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful… again these are not really avoidable. To be human is to experience physical and emotional discomforts. But can I experience these without becoming overwhelmed by them? I suppose that is the practice.
“Association with the unbeloved is stressful; separation from the loved is stressful; not getting what is wanted is stressful…”
Daily life is inconstant, unpredictable, uncertain, it is woven together with impermanence. I cannot control what I get and what I don’t get, but – whether I like it or not – this is my life. To argue with impermanence and uncertainty is to argue with the inarguable.
I have a recurring theme in my head lately. The closing verses from the long version of Rumi’s poem ‘The Guest House’…
“And if the pearl is not in sorrow’s hand,let it go and still be pleased.Increase your sweet practice.Your practice will benefit you at another time;someday your need will be suddenly fulfilled.”
So, maybe, that’s what we all have to do… increase our sweet practice… and then, I hope friends, that someday all of our genuine needs will be suddenly fulfilled.

Coming Home To The Body with Breath
2019-02-03 10:00 - 11:00
Imagine not being able to find your way home to your loved one’s, to your friends and family. Imagine how traumatic this would be. And this is the same trauma we experience when we have split from our body and can not find our way back into the body. We have to find our way back home to our body if we want freedom from the prison of our minds.
The Buddha was teaching us to breathe through the body, feelings, mental formation and all mind objects with calm. The anapanasati meditation, the mindfulness of breathing is teaching us to come back to the body.
The journey of wisdom is learning to find our way back to the body. But some of us have lost our way home because our bodies were violated in childhood. To protect ourselves we made sure nobody was at home in our body. We switched all feeling off.
If we are able to find our way back home. Turn all the
feelings back on in the body. We will learn to turn towards our direct experience unfolding in every moment.
In Vipassana meditation we are saying come back to the body, come back to the breathing, inhabit your body, and be in direct experience with whatever is arising in the now.
The body is the home for all of us. It’s where we live all our lives, and if we are not at peace in our body, we will not be at peace in any other areas of our lives. We have to learn to befriend our body, and not treat it like an enemy. And know it is safe to have our feelings now.
We come home to the body with breath. (This is an edited version from Vimalasara’s new course for Insight Timer launching September 10th)
Three tips for practice

Breathe
Do nothing when discomfort, comfort or neutral sensations arise in the body or mind
Be kind and compassionate to yourself by remembering to pause

Vimalasara (Valerie) was the co-founder and guiding teacher of Healing and Insight, an online faculty that explored the sharp edges of suffering. Award-winning author of 8 books, she is the co-founder and co-author of Eight Step Recovery: Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction, with 8 step meetings in 3 continents. And she is also the co-founder of Mindfulness-Based Addiction Recovery. Vimalasara is a senior teacher in the Triratna Order and Community.

Greed, Hate and Delusion: A Buddhist Theory of Everything
2019-01-06 10:00 - 11:00
“We are all addicted. We all plan our escapes from the existential angst of modern life. Some of us are just a bit more subtle about it than others. Buddhist psychology is the study of avoidance and addiction. Through the processes commonly known as the three poisons and popularly translated as ‘greed, hate and delusion’ we avoid the reality of suffering and responsibility by choosing our particular poisons, and in so doing we generate further levels of misery for ourselves. With a myriad variations on the old theme, we set ourselves apart psychologically from our troubled times; an action which is devastating to all our futures on a planet overburdened by consumption and conflict as well as to our personal well-being. In this talk I will be offering some basic insights derived from this Buddhist understanding and some pointers which Buddhism offers for unhooking from these pernicious processes, both at the personal and the collective level.”

The Dharma in Family Recovery
2018-12-02 10:00 - 11:00
“Not everyone has the type of brain that finds significant relief through alcohol or other substances; in fact, most people had to find other ways to leave, numb, or explain away (i.e., distort) experiences that were too overwhelming for the body, heart and mind of a developing child. And even if you didn’t grow up in the microcosm of an addicted or mentally ill family, all of us grew up in the macrocosm shaped by voracious consumerism, aggression, and confusion about our true relationship to what we call “nature.” We need to recover from the suffering of socially acceptable forms of self-delusion. So for all of us growing up in this culture, recovering awareness of the body and a sense of belonging in life is crucial for navigating, and this is never more true than when you are dealing with the chronic illness of a loved one. Join us for a time of practicing responsible self care.”

A Searching and Fearless Meditation
2018-11-04 10:00 - 11:00

Gratitude Turns What We Have Into Enough and More
2018-10-07 10:00 - 11:00
“Recovery and gratitude seem to go hand in hand. In the heat of our addictions, whether substance or process, we all tend to really focus on the hardships of our lives, our trials and tribulations and get stuck in the old comparison game, comparing our insides to others outsides, a line heard frequently in 12 step meetings. That’s probably a big reason why we drink, use or act out. We get stuck in the unhealthy mental loop of “poor me”, “why me” or “what’s wrong with me”…those “Greatest Hits of Addiction”, right? We start to believe those stories, we start to program these minds to constantly get hyper-focused on the difficult and painful. And we suffer. So, with this practice of gratitude, we can begin to rewire the mind to appreciate what is good and true and wholesome. This isn’t a make-believe practice. As the internet meme says “there’s ALWAYS something to be grateful for”. Let’s dive into this more, practice with it and find some freedom.”

Mindful of Race
2018-09-02 10:00 - 11:00
“Racism remains one of the most rooted and painful impasses of our time. It is fed through unawareness and the misuse of power. Embedded in racism is the skeletal shape of all oppressions. To understand the dynamics of racism and the flesh we put on its bones is to also understand other forms of oppression and our relationship to differences, divisions, and diversity. Too many of us want racial suffering to go away without first being touched by it or caring for it. Yet recognizing how we have been conditioned to think and react is at the heart of both racial distress and racial healing. In this introductory talk, we discover how our inner life is reflected in the world through the Buddha’s teachings on Ultimate and Relative Reality and Distortion of Mind, and the three truths we must remember but often forget.”

Suffering and Happiness – Both are Present, Embrace Them
2018-08-05 10:00 - 11:00
“Living Happily with things as they are (Drishta dharma sukha viharin) encourages an ancient Buddhist teaching. Those of us who have lived with addiction, struggled with recovery and found our common bonds: trauma and toxic shame, may find that teaching simplistic or even dismissive.As Buddhists, we know that suffering is part of life. We accept that. Then, right in the center of the Big Book of alcoholics anonymous (p 132) is a wonderful sentence: “We absolutely insist on enjoying life… we are not a glum lot”!How do we create a life that includes both suffering and happiness? Letting go!Gil Fronsdal writes: “Renunciation is one of the most beneficial, empowering, and freeing practices of Buddhism. As its purpose is to heighten the best qualities of our hearts and minds, renunciation is not meant to diminish our lives but rather to enhance them. Abstaining from intoxicating drinks and drugs—the fifth ethical precept—is an important Buddhist practice.So, we welcome suffering and delusion when they arise, we notice them, but we do not cling. We let them go and we acknowledge that happiness is also present.Not one, not two.”

The Practice of Freedom
2018-07-01 10:00 - 11:00

Living Kindness
2018-06-03 10:00 - 11:00

Insight into Awakening
2018-05-06 10:00 - 11:00

Letting Go of the Second Arrow
2018-04-01 10:00 - 11:00

Seeing Pass the Impulse
2018-03-04 10:00 - 11:00
