This page is an attempt to identify or create resources that are useful in envisioning, planning, creating, and delivering Dharma talks.
Like everything, it is a work-in-progress. It will no doubt be inadequate and perhaps even offer unskillful advice, but it is a starting point.
Resources
Some, possibly helpful, resources that we’ve found are listed in this PDF.
If you have or know of resources that may help with some aspect of creating and giving a Dharma talk, please let us know.
Zoom
Collaborating with other people over Zoom is really easy to do. If you are unsure of how to do it, check out some of the Zoom tutorials. Their general category of video tutorials is available at this link. From there if you look at the section titled ‘Zoom Meetings and Webinars’ you’ll see these two helpful links:
If you don’t already have an account, create one here. After that you can simply login and schedule a meeting as shown in the above video. At the end of that process, click the ‘Copy invitation’ button and paste that into an email to send to the people you’re inviting.
The free tier of Zoom restricts meetings of 3 people or more to 40 minutes. When Zoom bumps you out you can just click the link again to get another 40 minutes.
In 2021-2022 the CT sangha of the DTO chose to focus on learning how to deliver an ‘effective’ Dharma talk. (There’s more information in the videos from our 9/25/21 practice.) Here is a quick summary of how we plan to do this:
- The identifying task has already started and will continue throughout the year as we learn what’s needed.
- We’ll all participate in the practice portion by:
- Sharing what we know, what we’ve learned, what resources we value.
- Assisting the presenter as needed in planning or practice.
- Being prepared for the talk by imagining how you would do it.
- Deeply listening to the talk.
- One or two people will ‘echo’ back to the presenter what they heard.
- All of the audience will be asked to complete an open-ended review questionnaire within two days. The review is not so much on the subject matter itself, but on attributes of the talk such as its structure, style, delivery, engagement, etc.
- A panel will be used before and after the talk to provide assistance, synthesize the audience’s feedback, and virtually meet with the presenter and other interested parties. The point being:
- To give and get constructive feedback on the talk.
- To discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how the teaching method could be improved.
- To determine how to transmit what we’ve learned to future teachers.
- How to transmit our wisdom?
- We’ll build a list of resources we find.
- We will create guidelines and/or advice
- The most successful approach would be to open this up so that future teachers can see our process. At the end of the year we would then have a collection of detailed case studies of the process of how to give a Dharma talk.
- The teacher starts by thinking about the meta-level questions and documents them.
- They make periodic notes on their preparation process so future teachers can see the process they went through.
- They meet with the review committee to share their plans.
- They capture their feelings about the presentation before the talk and then again after it.
- The teacher offers the talk to the group.
- The people who attended the talk complete a survey/review, including any suggestions they may have.
- The review committee creates a summary of their and the audience’s reviews and suggestions.
- The committee meets with the teacher to discuss their experience and share the responses of the audience. The committee summarizes the meeting.
- Names and other identifying information are removed or replaced in the notes and they are compiled forming the completed case study.
