The Deer Park Dharmacast

Dear Friends,

Today, we continue to offer excerpts of recent Question and Response sessions from this year's retreats to help us bring the practice into our daily lives.  This week, we present questions and responses on practicing mindfulness at home with our families.  How do we best guide our children?  And how can we practice when our family is not practicing?  Brother Phap Ho and Brother Phap Tuyen share from their experiences before and after becoming monks and give real examples of how to approach specific situations.

As always, you can find the Deer Park Dharmacast online at dpcast.net, on Twitter, Facebook, and iTunes. Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

Dear Friends,

Recently on the Dharmacast, we've heard our monastic brothers encourage us to bring the practice into our daily lives.  But the question arises: How do we *actually* do that?  So for the next few weeks, we'll offer segments from recent Question and Response sessions at Deer Park to answer that question.

This week, our focus is work.  How do we apply the practice at work?  Brother Phap Ho and Sister Karen, a lay dharma teacher, offer practical examples of mindful work and share how to achieve a healthy work and home life balance.

On the topic of work, The Deer Park Dharmacast team has a great time putting together the podcasts for you each week.  Thank you for listening.  If you love our podcasts and want to get involved, please join our small team of volunteers!  Whether it's selecting content, editing audio, or managing our social media, we need more help to keep the Dharmacast going.  All of our work is virtual, over the internet, so wherever you are in the world, and whatever your skills are, you can help!  Send us an email at dpcastlove(at)gmail.com; we'd love to hear from you.

As always, you can find the Deer Park Dharmacast online at dpcast.net, on Twitter, Facebook, and iTunes. Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

Dear Friends,

Today we share the first half of a talk given a few weeks ago by Brother Phap Hai at Deer Park Monastery.  Having recently returned from Korea and Hong Kong, he shares the importance of putting the Dharma into practice. What is preventing our life from becoming our practice?  Brother Phap Hai likens three pots of kim chi to the three qualities that hinder our ability to truly practice.  

Remember you can find the Deer Park Dharmacast online at dpcast.net, on twitter, facebook, and iTunes. Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

Dear Friends,

In this week's segment, we continue with Brother Phap Ho's dharma talk from the 2012 Mindfulness Retreat.  He shares why mindfulness by itself is not enough; we need to discover a spiritual path and a community to walk with to transform our suffering.  He also delves into how to understand our mind consciousness and nurture our well-being.

After hearing the Dharma, we invite you to share your experience with other listeners online at dpcast.net or on our Facebook page.  Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

Remember you can find the Deer Park Dharmacast online at dpcast.net, on twitter, facebook, and iTunes. 

Dear Friends,

This week we offer the first half of a dharma talk given by Brother Phap Ho at the 2012 Mindfulness Retreat.  He explores the questions, "What is suffering?" and "How do we transform ill-being and nourish well-being?" from his own perspective, but also from the perspective of three great teachers and role models for him, the Buddha, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thich Nhat Hanh.  

Remember you can find the Deer Park Dharmacast online at dpcast.net, on twitter, facebook, and iTunes.

We invite you to share your thoughts and experiences of hearing the dharma with other listeners this week online at dpcast.net or on our facebook page.  

Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

Dear Friends,

This week we have a continuation from last week's podcast, as we listen to the second half of Brother Phap Hai's talk from Deer Park's 2012 Mindfulness Retreat.

Brother Phap Hai shares lessons from Master Dogen's 13th century Zen text, "Instructions for the Cook".  Furthermore, he shares that to go with the three roots of suffering, three different minds can be cultivated: joyful mind, magnanimous mind, and parental mind.

Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

Dear Friends,

This week's dharma talk was given by Brother Phap Hai at the 2012 Mindfulness Retreat at Deer Park Monastery.  

Known for his poetic and engaging dharma talks, he shares the Buddha's teachings about the three roots of our suffering; greed, ill-will, and delusion; and the eight winds or worldly dharmas; gain, loss, status, disgrace, praise, blame, pleasure and pain.  

Brother Phap Hai challenges us to look critically at our lives and ask two questions: what is practice? and are we sure?

You will notice the sound of the wind and a lovely baby during the talk.  Enjoy the imperfectness of the recording.  =)

Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

Dear Friends,   

This week's dharma talk was given by Brother Phap Don at the recent People of Color retreat at Deer Park Monastery on the concept: "I have arrived, I am home."  

How can we arrive and find our true home?  Brother Phap Don first offers us the repetition and mindfulness of the daily mundane activities and then describes the Buddha's 12 mindfulness exercises. 

Join the DP Dharmacast team in welcoming (back) Soren Kisiel, who is kindly recording the introductions for the weekly podcasts.

Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

Dear Friends,

During the New Year's retreat, Brother Phap De gave a wonderful dharma talk on gratitude.  Although it's the middle of the year, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the message.  Brother Phap De delves deeply into gratitude to our parents.  With Mother's Day having just passed and Father's Day coming up, I thought we might have our parents on our minds.

Enjoy this moment to stop and look deeply.

"When we're addicted to our own thinking, it is the cause of almost all of our suffering. And that experience kills the possibility of gratitude."

"A quote from the Buddha: I tell you, there are two people that are not easy to repay. Which two?  Your mother and father."