Talks from 2020
Retreats and series
Every talk, newest first
- Dec 13 2020 – MN 152 - The Development of the Faculties – Awakening Beyond the Senses
Delson reads MN 152, the Indriya Bhavana Sutta, and explains that the Buddha's supreme development of the faculties is meeting sense contact with equanimity rather than suppressing the…
- Dec 6 MN 28 The Greater Discourse on the Simile of the Elephant's Footprint - The Four Noble Truths
Delson reads MN 28 and explains how Sariputta's discourse analyses the Four Noble Truths, with the five aggregates affected by clinging as suffering.
- Nov 29 2020 - MN 11 - The Shorter Discourse on the Lion's Roar - Cessation of Clinging and Being
Delson reads MN 11, the Shorter Discourse on the Lion's Roar, and explains the four kinds of clinging (to sensual pleasures, views, rites and rituals, and a doctrine of self).
- Day-9 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions from the final day of an online 10-day retreat.
- Day-8 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions about rebirth, saying that consciousness is not an eternal soul but arises dependent on experience, with formations driven by craving and intention carried into a…
- Day-7 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers audience questions on the final day of an online 10-day retreat.
- Day-6 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
In this question-and-answer session from an online retreat, Delson Armstrong explains continued existence as a cycle in which consciousness, conditioned by craving and clinging, produces…
- Nov 22 2020 - MN 121 - The Shorter Discourse on Voidness - The Signless and Empty Mind of an Arahant
Delson reads MN 121, the Cula Sunnata Sutta, in which the Buddha describes abiding in voidness by noticing what is absent from experience and what remains.
- Day-5 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions from day five of an online ten-day retreat in November 2020.
- Day-4 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers participant questions on day four of an online 10-day retreat.
- Day-3 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions from day three of an online ten-day retreat in November 2020.
- Day-2 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers retreat participants' questions on day two of an online 10-day retreat.
- Day-2 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers participants' questions on a day-two online retreat, covering MN10 contemplation of internal and external phenomena, bare observation as mindfulness, and balancing the seven…
- Day-4 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions from a day-4 online retreat Q&A.
- Day-0 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions at the start of an online 10-day retreat.
- Day-1 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-17) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions from the first day of an online 10-day retreat.
- Day-7 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions from day 7 of an online 10-day retreat on the Dhamma.
- Day-8 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers audience questions from the seventh day of an online retreat.
- Day-5 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers questions from a day of an online retreat.
- Day-1 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers participants' questions on the first day of an online retreat.
- Day-6 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
Delson answers listener questions from day six of an online ten-day retreat on the stages of awakening, nibbana and cessation, rebirth, and dependent origination.
- Day-9 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
In this closing question-and-answer session from day nine of an online ten-day retreat, Delson Armstrong answers questions on whether lay people can become arahants without joining the…
- Day-3 QA - Online 10-day Retreat (Nov-3) with Delson Armstrong
This question-and-answer session from an online retreat covers jhana objects, development by application, and how to recognize jhana factors without verbalizing them.
- Nov 15 2020 - MN 143 - Advice to Anāthapiṇḍika - Disengaging Consciousness Towards Nibbana
Delson reads and comments on MN 143, the Anathapindikovada Sutta, in which Sariputta advises the dying householder Anathapindika to stop clinging to the six senses, their contact and…
- Nov 8 2020 - MN 138 - The Exposition of a Summary - Non-Grasping Consciousness Leads to Nibbana
Delson reads MN 138 (the Exposition of a Summary), in which Maha Kacchana explains the Buddha's brief teaching that a mind not scattered externally, not stuck internally, and not clinging…
- Nov 1 2020 - MN 141 The Analysis of the Truths - Applying the Four Noble Truths
Delson reads MN 141, the Analysis of the Truths, in which Sariputta explains the four noble truths, including suffering in the five aggregates and the eightfold path ending in right…
- Oct 25 2020 - MN105 - To Sunakkhatta - The Power of Letting go
Delson reads and comments on MN105 (Sunakkhatta Sutta), in which the Buddha says some monks who declare final knowledge do so rightly and others overestimate themselves.
- Oct 18 2020 - MN147 - The Shorter Discourse of Advice to Rahula - The Process of Un-Being
Delson reads MN147, the Shorter Discourse of Advice to Rahula, and presents it as the last part of a trilogy of Rahula suttas.
- Oct 11 MN 133 - Mahākaccāna and a Single Excellent Night - The Nature of Consciousness in Meditation
Delson reads MN 133, the Single Excellent Night exposition given by Maha Kaccana, which says not to revive the past or build hopes on the future, and to see each presently arisen state…
- Q&A at DSMC Global Sitting Group - Oct 11, 2020
Delson answers questions from a Q&A session at a DSMC Global Sitting Group about linking the 6 R's to right effort in the Eightfold Path.
- Question and Answers on Path and Fruition
Delson discusses the idea of a path and fruition in the context of the stages of awakening.
- Oct 4 MN 117 - The Great Forty - The Effect of Precepts in Meditation
Delson reads MN 117 (the Great Forty) and explains the eightfold path as the Buddha describes it, with right view coming first and each factor supported by right effort and right…
- Oct 4 2020 - MN 117 - The Great Forty - The Effect of Precepts in Meditation #2
Delson reads and comments on MN 117, the Great Forty, which presents right view as the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path and shows each factor being developed with right effort and…