This talk is a preview of the GBF Fall Retreat: Our Belonging to Kindness: Awakening to the World We Carry Together, September 25-27, 2026.
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How do we take ancient, highly analytical Buddhist teachings and make them truly land in our everyday, modern lives?
In this warm and deeply personal talk, Prasadachitta helps us imagine what it must have been like to be in the presence of the Buddha, hearing him speak directly to us in language that is easily understood. He invites us to step away from academic perfectionism and instead embrace the Buddha’s “come and see” invitation to experience a colloquial relationship with the Dharma.
Prasadachitta explains that he isn’t concerned with strict historical or translation accuracy. Instead, he feels empowered as a practitioner to make these teachings real in his own life, letting the translated phrases of the Karaniya Metta Sutta shift and be rephrased depending on how they “hit” him, trusting that actual practice will naturally self-correct any misunderstandings. To remind us that the Dharma is built to be accessible, he shares the traditional qualities of teaching from the Dharma Vandana, proving that the truth is always meant to be practical:
- Intelligible and Well-Communicated: The Buddha always met people where they were, using everyday language and lived experiences (like those of farmers or kings) so we can actually do something with what is being communicated.
- Experienced Here and Now: It is a testable path that we can start practicing and verifying in our lives immediately.
- Perennial: Its core truths are timeless, surviving any historical or cultural change.
- Open to Investigation (Ehipassiko): It functions as a personal “come and see” invitation rather than a rigid system demanding blind belief.
- Progressive: It leads us onward, continuously unpacking new layers of wisdom as we engage with it.
- Individually Verifiable: It is ultimately validated through our own direct experience, turning us into the wise ones who know peace for themselves.
With this open-minded, personal approach, Prasadachitta guides us directly into the Karaniya Metta Sutta as a highly practical roadmap for our spiritual growth. Rather than treating its instructions as abstract rules, he encourages us to relate to them through our own physical, lived experiences.
- When the sutta asks us to be upright but “flexible,” he illustrates this with a wonderful story about a flight attendant who playfully deputized snack-stealing kids to help her hand out peanuts, transforming a potential moment of conflict into an act of community.
- To make the sutta’s famous instruction to love “as a mother cherishes her only child” real for himself, he connects it to his own mother’s “rough” but deep, physical hugs that he can still feel in his body today.
- By bringing our own imagination and personal memories into the practice, we learn to cultivate a fierce, boundless goodwill that moves us from everyday “eminence” to spiritual “transcendence”.
Ultimately, Prasadachitta promises that as we rest in this unlimited kindness, we naturally let go of our rigid views, become spontaneously ethical, and experience a quiet, complete sense of freedom.
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Prasadachitta was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2011 and he became the Chair of the San Francisco Buddhist Center in April 2022. He was born on a “back to the land” commune in rural Northern California and that background has inspired his engagement with others in building the SFBC’s rural meditation center called Dharmadhara. He also helped to establish a community of sangha members who support the retreats there. He supports himself as a documentary filmmaker and photographer but his real life’s work is training others who want to practice Buddhism within the Triratna Buddhist Community.
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CREDITS
Audio Production: George Hubbard
Producer: Tom Bruein
Music/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter
