Finding Brightness and Goodness in a Troubled World with Ajahn Nisabho

When the world feels divided and heavy, it’s easy to forget the basic goodness that still surrounds us—and lives within us.

In this week’s talk, guest teacher Ajahn Nisabho invites us to rediscover that innate brightness of heart. He shares vivid teachings from the Buddha’s “Gold Washer” sutta—on refining our thoughts, words, and actions as a craftsperson would purify gold—and reflects on how virtue, forgiveness, and loving-kindness transform both our relationships and our inner life.

A beautiful reminder that awakening is not escape from the world, but learning to meet it with a steady, undefended heart.

02:30 - Seeing Goodness in the World: Returning to the “bright garden” beneath the headlines and reclaiming appropriate attention (yoniso manasikāra).
05:13 - Refining the Heart: Shifting from a moral lens of right/wrong to a visceral sense of the beautiful and unbeautiful in our actions.
09:43 - The Gold Washer Sutta: Using the Buddha’s metaphor of purifying gold to cleanse coarse, moderate, and fine impurities of heart.
13:10 - Everyday Virtue: Finding mindfulness in small acts—folding laundry, speaking kindly, and refraining from gossip.
17:16 - Cleansing Anger and Ill Will: Cultivating forgiveness, guarding the heart from resentment, and starting each day with loving awareness.
21:42 - Learning from Difficult People: How challenging relationships become our teachers in patience, humility, and compassion.
25:43 - Protecting the Heart in a Polarized World: Engaging without hatred, taking “news fasts,” and remembering our deeper duty to love.
28:51 - The Five Kinds of Loss: Wealth, health, relatives, right view, and virtue—and why the last two matter most.
31:02 - Remembering the Gold Beneath: Letting go of impurity to reveal the luminous nature of mind and heart.

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You can see the meditation that went along with this talk at: https://rickhanson.com/talk-meditation-finding-brightness-and-goodness-in-a-troubled-world/

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