Dharma explorations by Stephanie Noble

From over fifteen years of sharing her understanding of Buddhist concepts

  • Bells, Bowing and Buddhas

    Looking over this blog, you may have gotten it that I’m gaga over bells. There’s a bowl bell at the top of the blog and two big bells represented by photo and painting on the side and bottom. The one on the top is the bell I ring at the end of the meditation I…

  • The Sweet Silence of the Sangha on Retreat

    In an August post I gave a pretty thorough accounting of the retreat experience at Spirit Rock. This late November retreat was ten nights instead of six in August, we had Teja Bell teaching Qi Gong instead of Janice Gates and Anne Cushman teaching yoga, it was a Thanksgiving retreat so we had a lovely…

  • On Retreat

    I am off to Spirit Rock for a ten night Thanksgiving retreat, so I posted the gratitude dharma talk early, and recorded it for my students to listen to when they gather together this Tuesday.If reading that I am off on retreat makes you feel envy, it’s an invitation to yourself to make time in…

  • Gratitude for Everything

    We come together this time of year in a celebration of giving thanks. Many of us have cherished traditions. Probably just as many would be happy to skip the whole season. But whatever our feelings about the holiday of Thanksgiving, most of us enjoy feeling gratitude and the act of counting our blessings even if…

  • Mudita, Sympathetic Joy: Yet Another Gift of Meditation Practice

    This exploration of freedoms we have been doing for the past couple of months has much in common with the Four Brahmaviharas, or ‘heavenly abodes.’ These are states that are the gift of the practice, just as our freedoms we’ve been discussing are gifts of the practice. They are states that can’t be achieved by…