Shaila Catherine is the founder of Bodhi Courses (bodhicourses.org) an online Dhamma classroom, and Insight Meditation South Bay, a meditation center in Mountain View, California (imsb.org). She has practiced meditation since 1980, with more than nine years of accumulated silent retreat experience, and has taught since 1996 in the USA, and internationally. Shaila has dedicated several years to studying with masters in India, Nepal and Thailand, completed a one year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhana, and authored The Jhanas: A Practical Guide to Deep Meditative States (Wisdom Publications). From 2006–2014, Shaila studied jhana and vipassana under the direction of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw, and authored Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana (Wisdom Publications, 2011) to make his systematic approach of meditative training accessible to western practitioners. Her third book, Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind, teaches skills to overcome restless thinking, rumination, and obstructive habitual patterns. Shaila’s teachings are characterized by precision, diligence, and gentleness. She emphasizes deep samadhi, jhāna, loving kindness, and the path of liberating insight.
In this recording, Shaila Catherine offers detailed instructions in the form of a guided meditation for systematically cultivating sympathetic joy (mudita). The method involves directing attention to beings who occupy a variety of categories, while the meditator reflects on phrases that stimulate an attitude of rejoicing. Mudita is a powerful quality that uproots envy, ends jealously, and overcomes aversion, chronic comparing, and excessive competitiveness.
In this guided meditation, Shaila Catherine highlights the powerful role that concentration plays as we cultivate the awakening factors. The instructions slowly walk through the sequence of Awakening Factors demonstrating how they create the conditions for the next factor in the sequence, and then explores various qualities of the collected mind and choices the meditator may make to further develop the mind once samadhi has been established.
This is a long guided meditation in which Shaila Catherine offers systematic instruction for cultivating loving kindness (metta) and compassion (karuna) through the use of intention filled phrases directed toward beings in various categories.
Shaila Catherine describes how the wholesome state of mettā serves not only as an antidote to anger, fear, and ill will, but is also a force that can overcome all the hindrances. A mind imbued with mettā is both strong and yielding; it is balanced and upright. Mettā contributes to both the development of samādhi and also insight. A mind strengthened by mettā will be able to face the unsatisfactory conditions of dukkha with clarity and balance, without blaming society, and without getting angry at other people. Mettā training gives us a way to take responsibility for cultivating happiness. When our minds are well developed, we will dwell at ease, in comfort, free from the hindrances, primed for abandoning lust, hate, and delusion.
The Buddha teaches that, just as the dawn precedes the rising sun, so developing certain qualities prepares us for fully engaging in our practice of the Noble Eightfold Path. Seven of these qualities are taught in the Magga Samyutta (SN 45:49-90): good friends, and the accomplishments in virtue, desire, self, view, diligence, and careful attention. This series of brief talks, Shaila Catherine introduces each of these qualities and illuminates how their development can support our path to liberation.
The Buddha teaches that, just as the dawn precedes the rising sun, so developing certain qualities prepares us for fully engaging in our practice of the Noble Eightfold Path. Seven of these qualities are taught in the Magga Samyutta (SN 45:49-90): good friends, and the accomplishments in virtue, desire, self, view, diligence, and careful attention. This series of brief talks, Shaila Catherine introduces each of these qualities and illuminates how their development can support our path to liberation.
In this talk, Shaila Catherine explores five ways that one may become fully awakened—an arahant. The teaching is based on a discourse found in the Anguttara Nikaya (AN 5:26). These ways include awakening 1) by listening to someone teach the dhamma, 2) while teaching the dhamma, 3) by reciting the teachings in detail as one has learned them, 4) while pondering, examining and investigating the dhamma, and 5) through penetrative wisdom with an object of concentration. Study, reflection, and deep meditation create conducive conditions for awakening. Study informs and inspires our meditation practice; meditation produces depth and clarity in understanding. We can balance our engagement with both study and meditation to optimize the cultivation of this liberating path.
The Buddha teaches that, just as the dawn precedes the rising sun, so developing certain qualities prepares us for fully engaging in our practice of the Noble Eightfold Path. Seven of these qualities are taught in the Magga Samyutta (SN 45:49-90): good friends, and the accomplishments in virtue, desire, self, view, diligence, and careful attention. This series of brief talks, Shaila Catherine introduces each of these qualities and illuminates how their development can support our path to liberation.
The Buddha teaches that, just as the dawn precedes the rising sun, so developing certain qualities prepares us for fully engaging in our practice of the Noble Eightfold Path. Seven of these qualities are taught in the Magga Samyutta (SN 45:49-90): good friends, and the accomplishments in virtue, desire, self, view, diligence, and careful attention. This series of brief talks, Shaila Catherine introduces each of these qualities and illuminates how their development can support our path to liberation.
In this talk, Shaila Catherine suggests that everyone is responsible for their own state of balance. She explores several practical areas for cultivating a balanced approach to practice including: aligning the body posture with the force of gravity, recognizing how mindfulness brings a balanced relationship to sensory experiences, and cultivating a non-reactive attitude toward both pleasant and unpleasant feelings. We learn to quickly restore our emotional balance whenever we find ourselves entangled in stories or personal dramas. We refine our ability to apply balanced effort in the way that we engage with meditation. And we continuously refine the powerful balance in the meditating mind by perceiving how the five spiritual faculties and the seven awakening factors are affecting our attention and understanding.
