I didn’t see any announcement for these video’s, but I happened to stumble upon them and was pleasantly surprised.
Description
The brahmavihārās, or the four immeasurables, are the four boundless states of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, and the meditation practices used to cultivate them. In this freely offered series of video talks and audio meditations, Bhikkhu Analayo reflects on what these teachings offer us now in a time of such fear and uncertainty.
The six video chapters comprise an in-depth study of brahmavihāra meditation and the gradual entry into emptiness (described in the Cūḷasuññata-sutta, MN 121), relating both of these modes of practice to progress to awakening. The emphasis throughout is on what is of practical relevance to actual meditation practice.
They have been posted now (I received links in an email today).
I was actually in time to download from the original link. They streamed as video but downloaded as mp3, so you got the lot @Aminah :D.
The email also contained a free PDF of the entire book:
I’ve been wishing there were audios to go with that book for AGES. What a lovely time to release them now, while time is so … empty.
Thank you for this! Analayo does have a nice soothing voice, which IMO is very suited to such guided meditations. I spent the best part of a year regularly working with his satipatthana approach after his practice guide for that came out. Have been trying his approach to anapanasati for the past few months (again after his book on this came out). Actually bought the Compassion and Emptiness book a while back but it’s still on my “to read” list. Really nice to see an accompanying set of audios and talks for this, which will be nice when I do get around to reading it!
Am still wondering about these links; I’ve only been able to spot guided meditations (as per the …/compassion-audio/ link above) but not any talks. From Linda’s (now deleted post) I got the impression that any other AV material was, at least for the moment, only intended for a closed group of participants.
Also, thanks so much for the link to the book Gillian; highly appreciated!
Good point! I clicked on some of the audio links and, from what I could hear, they seem to be much in style of his earlier guided meditations. There was mention of talks also. I just assumed they’d be in there somewhere too, but seemingly not!
There were talks as well. They were taken from a retreat as far as I could see. In the videos Venerable Analayo gives an introduction to the guided meditations (there were also six videos). But after I posted the link here, they took down the page with videos and audio and now there are only the guided meditations. I don’t know if the videos will be published (again) on a later date.
OK. Perhaps there were some privacy issues to take into account. I suppose it’s one thing sharing some video from a retreat amongst retreat participants, but another matter putting it out on the internet for the world to see (if people hadn’t knowingly signed up for that anyway ).
@Aminah@Danny
I believe the talks were not meant to be posted/available on the site at this time which is why the link no longer works. But the meditations are freely available to anyone now. And his Compassion and Emptiness book which @Gillian posted the link for covers much of the material, and offers a good introduction to, and context, for the meditations. There’s a residential course scheduled at BCBS on this topic in the fall (but given the situation, who knows if BCBS will be open then).
Am still wondering about these links; I’ve only been able to spot guided meditations (as per the …/compassion-audio/ link above) but not any talks. From Linda’s (now deleted post) I got the impression that any other AV material was, at least for the moment, only intended for a closed group of participants.
).