Dharma explorations by Stephanie Noble

From over fifteen years of sharing her understanding of Buddhist concepts

  • Wise Mindfulness — the joy of being fully present

    As you read these words, sense in to what is going on in this moment. Your eyes are activated. What else do you notice? Can you feel the pull of gravity as pressure on your seat or feet? What else? Pay attention to all your senses that anchor you in this moment.Mindfulness is noticing what’s…

  • Wise View — Seeing what blinds us to seeing what is

    We continue working with the Cooking Pot Analogy, and like all analogies it works to a point, but don’t push it. When we come to Wise View, this is especially true. Yes the pot itself is a means of holding, and we ‘hold views’, so it seems appropriate. But in looking at the Eightfold Path,…

  • Wise Effort – Finding the right balance

    While meditating before giving my dharma talk I noticed that when I over-effort — striving and straining, trying to get something right — the ‘cure’ is to apply my intention to be kind. Loving-kindness, releases the tight knots of unskillful exertion. I feel released into a quality of supported ease, where I am not alone,…

  • Wise Intention to the rescue!

    Intention plays such an important role in our lives but so often we are completely unaware of what our intentions are in any particular endeavor.If we look again at the Eightfold Path cooking pot analogy, we can see that Wise Intention is the flame that lights the fire that cooks the pot that creates the…

  • The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path

    We’ve been exploring the First and Second Noble Truths: the existence of suffering, dukkha, and the causes of dukkha. In the Third Noble Truth the Buddha says, hey, don’t worry, there’s a way out of this mess, and that way is the Noble Eightfold Path.So here we are in the Fourth Noble Truth which is…