Store: DVD & VHS: Toni Packer on DVD
DVDs are $15 per talk, $60 for a complete set (available when indicated). All DVDs are region free.
Toni Packer Interviewed by Joan Tollifson
| Jan. 1992 |
- Does Toni see herself as a teacher?
- Do we need self-esteem and positive identity?
- How do we work with hurt or anger?
- Addiction: to substances, thoughts, answers, ideal states of being. (50 mins)
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February 2006 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- Becoming aware of the movement of striving.
- Letting inward listening stand on its own, not directed to something.
- Listening from moment to moment without knowing what will happen.
- Feeling hectic, when awared, slows down, and vision grows clearer. (34 mins)
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November 2005 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- Seeing without knowing.
- Fossil tensions - they have no function anymore?
- The body's conditioning to cram, as if for a test at the end of retreat?
- Acknowledging your real condition is a relief, not a chore.
- How amazing when a tone of voice that once raised your hackles stirs nothing. (39 mins)
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| Day 3 |
- When words, commands, drop out of a tension, it relaxes. It needs no "relax!"
- Amazing what can be heard and felt when the mind is open to receive.
- We have too little trust in letting be, the fullness and strength of letting be. (35 mins)
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| Day 6 |
- Two koans: "Think neither good nor evil" and "Zuigan calls his master."
- Not just thinking, "there's neither good nor evil," but dualistic thinking vanishing.
- Awareness with no circumference of me and mine, and "the world" beyond it.
- Krishnamurti's "goodness that has no opposite."
- In the state of thinking neither good nor evil, could we say that's pure goodness?
- We don't even need that word. That's the beauty of it, there's no defining it or us. (39 mins)
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August 2005 Retreat (Complete set available)
| Day 1 |
- Listening without expectations. Watching inner images. (40 mins)
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| Day 2 |
- What's the practice here? Slowing down in presence. (42 mins)
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| Day 3 |
- Wanting what you have, not wanting what you don't have. Gutei's finger. (43 mins)
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| Day 5 |
- What is the truth? Inquiry, not therapy. A single point of listening. (41 mins)
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| Day 6 |
- Not knowing. Holistic sensing. (38 mins)
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July 2005 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- To realize how we live in assumptions.
- To be in awe of our own and others' unknowableness.
- We have as many sides as there are situations in this world.
- Strength to behold the shocking things awareness reveals in one.
- Strength that comes with freedom from identification. (32 mins)
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| Day 3 |
- "Are you a mystic?" A thing is mysterious until it isn't.
- Learning from sitting pain. How wanting to get rid of it increases it.
- To sit without thinking it should be blissful, without searching for meaning in pain.
- The wonder of first touching pain, after decades' assumption that it's untouchable.
- You don't need to make effort to hear. Just let go of the super-noise. (44 mins)
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Sunday Progam Talk April 24, 2005
| Apr. 24 |
- Relative and absolute truth. (25 mins)
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Sunday Progam Talk February 13, 2005
| Feb. 13 |
- What is being sought in religion?
- Is attachment for protection? For security?
- A description of "the work of this moment." (30 mins)
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February 2005 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- Listening without inward or outward defense. (41 mins)
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| Day 2 |
- When awareness & conditioning coexist. Belief in a doer. (34 mins)
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November 2004 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- Starting from not knowing who or what we are.
- Finding what's actually here by stopping the usual internal dialogue.
- Memory becomes less important as listening deepens.
- The brain remembering for revenge, keeping score of who does what to whom. (30 mins)
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| Day 2 |
- How does one deal with the actuality of loss and disability?
- Observe thoughts, and the emotions triggered.
- Not to control these, but awaring what's going on.
- Toni's grief process around Kyle's death.
- With the wisdom of awareness one can turn away from the causes of suffering. (32 mins)
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| Day 5 |
- Discussion of three mind-states.
- Me-oriented thought.
- Witnessing (insight running alongside the "me" storyline).
- Selfless awareness - open awaring, without clinging. Sustained with no sustainer.
- Ramana Maharshi's early awakening years as illustration of egoless state.
- Detailed exploration of "questioning without knowing." (45 mins)
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| Day 6 |
- Getting beyond the concept of "right action."
- The pushed button - entanglement in emotions.
- Why is it a "problem" in the first place?
- Is there pleasure in imaginary or actual contention? (44 mins)
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April 2002 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- Constant rushing to do something, get someplace.
- Movement towards or away from.
- Motion, which we can't help, because there is no we - only motion.
- How absurd to think, "I shouldn't have" - it's just happened.
- See how expectations limit and focus the mind.
- Hui Neng's first vow - to free beings in my own mind.
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Sunday Progam Talk March 31, 2002
| Mar. 31 |
- Watching movement in the space of stillness.
- Is there an entity within that needs to be conquered?
- Can we watch without holding an idea of how we ought to be?
- Where is the borderline between inside and outside?
- Listening to the sounds of the wall, its numbness.
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September 1993 Retreat
| Day 1 |
- Listening and authority (43 mins)
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| Day 2 |
- Pain in sitting. Is any practice recommended here? (45 mins)
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| Day 3 |
- Judgmental labels. Wondering if we are making progress. (43 mins)
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| Day 4 |
- How can one not judge what goes on in the world?
- Right and wrong. Prejudice.
- Seeing that the "I" is just thought and image, not reality. (49 mins)
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| Day 5 |
- What is this "I"?Absorption in self-concerned thoughts and feelings. (51 mins)
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| Day 6 |
- The fight for survival. One's life story. Being everything and nothing. (57 mins)
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New Year 1992-93 Retreat in California
| Day 6 |
- Opening talks up to questions.
- Shikantaza and open sitting.
- Inquiring into dreams.
- Is it useful to seek to understand symbolic language?
- Does keeping a journal reinforce the sense of self, storyline?
- Getting "my fair share."
- God. (70 mins)
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