Audio: Wayne Coger 2005
The following talks by Wayne Coger are available on both CD and audio tape.
April 2005 Retreat
| Day 5 |
- Why come to retreat?
- To see that apple tree full of birds, to taste some soup.
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June 2005 Retreat
| Day 4 |
- When opinions clash in staff meeting, stepping back changes the whole atmosphere.
- Stepping back from point of view engenders something you might call creative.
- The joy of doing - dancing, painting, writing - is incredible.
- But it goes further and becomes a necessity - to be someone in some pursuit.
- "What if you couldn't dance?"
- Seems easy for dog Shadow, with weakened legs, to just walk at the pace he can.
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| Day 7 |
- "Isn't it enough to savor silence, plumb it? Why disturb with questions?"
- An irritant will loiter on the periphery until it's seen, met, understood.
- Not that its cause, history, is known - the understanding is exactly that it can be met.
- Can it bring ease to the mind to say, "All is God," "All is one?"
- It seems so unprovable, wishful thinking.
- The touching is here, in the thing itself.
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September 2005 Retreat
| Day 3 |
- Silence, solitude, and darkness.
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December 2005 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- A sneeze, creaking building, breathing, clasped hands.
- Is there any need to imagine a listener or doer in this?
- Any doing?
- To sit, walk, work without this need to orient myself, find my place in the world.
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| Day 2 |
- Does questioning disturb silence?
- Feedback loop of thought, bodily sensation, and the solid sense of oneself.
- Curious wondering shuts nothing out, it doesn't identify obstacles.
- "This is wrong, a hindrance," immediately sets up a division, and a desire to overcome.
- Listen with no object in mind.
- Let listening quiet the mind with its own energy, its own breadth and depth.
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| Day 3 |
- Is there a practice here?
- If you find some practice helpful, why not do it? Why be in argument?
- Devices like breath counting have a calming effect.
- But isn't the rising up of a device a function of the noisy mind?
- Is open awareness itself a technique?
- Where does one go with that question - to memory, a dictionary definition?
- Or does one look right here?
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| Day 4 |
- Is kindness synonymous with attention?
- If we're truly in touch, is it possible to act with indifference or malice?
- This layered cocoon, the self, it really is a perception, isn't it?
- Is there actually a wall and something to be walled off?
- When "me and the world" falls into disrepair, what is there between us?
- Where does one go with that question - to memory, a dictionary definition?
- Why is there not love, openness, friendliness and kindness?
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| Day 5 |
- The early-developed sense that one is different from the body and surroundings.
- We see we can attain desires and seek continuity in this, apart from rock and tree.
- The persistent mirage that if I can imagine my future, it must be, I must be.
- Just now, sun on eyelids - does the thought even come up that someone's doing it?
- Or is there simply a quiet room, quiet body, creaking chair.
- The intensity, depth, and beauty of quiet listening.
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| Day 6 |
- The sense of others.
- No difference really - self gives rise to other, other to self.
- Relating to the world, evaluating everything for benefit or harm.
- Judgments about others and seeing others without images.
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