Dharma explorations by Stephanie Noble

From over fifteen years of sharing her understanding of Buddhist concepts

  • First Foundation of Mindfulness – Review & a Few More Thoughts

    We have completed our exploration of the Buddha’s First Foundation of Mindfulness, focusing in turn on the breath, postures, contemplation on the body, elements and death.When you pour a concrete foundation, you want it to cure before you start adding more layers. Just so, I want to take the time to review and discuss the…

  • First Foundation of Mindfulness: Elements

    The Buddha taught about the elements of the body: earth, air, fire and water. As we develop a sensory awareness of physical nature, we can enhance that awareness by noticing these four elements as they show themselves in our experience.As we walk we can feel the earthy mass and weight of our body succumbing to…

  • Gratitude

    We are in an ongoing exploration of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, but we are taking a break this week to do a field trip to Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and then next week our Thursday meeting day is Thanksgiving Day in the US, so there will be no class.For students who are following along…

  • First Foundation of Mindfulness — Dealing with Death

    Our class last Thursday was on the day between Halloween and El Día de Los Muertos, so how fortunate that we just happened to be at the place in our study of the First Foundation of Mindfulness where the Buddha asks us to look at death. To get us in the mood, I led a meditation…

  • Contemplation of the Body – First Foundation of Mindfulness

    We have talked about the breath and the postures. The next traditional meditation in the First Foundation of Mindfulness is a focus on the individual parts of the body, starting with hair on our head and the rest of the body and ultimately looking at the overall functioning of the body, the systems, how all…