Even if you’ve been meditating for years, you probably encounter old patterns that seem impervious to your mindful awareness. Maybe at times these patterns are dormant, but during challenging moments they reappear and perhaps feel intractable. In this session we’ll explore inquiry practices that can help interrupt and disentangle the mind from its habitual “stuck” places and open our hearts to the ground of insight.
With Lisa Ernst recorded on October 22, 2023.
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Discover more from the Dharma Library
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Natural awareness: practicing in daily life.
Recorded :
July 10, 2016 Meditation is often viewed as something restricted to a certain posture or time of day. For most of us, the majority of our life will not be on retreat or even spent in a formal sitting posture. If we want to make best use of our daily life, it’s important to know that being aware…
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Befriending the emotions.
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October 16, 2016 So often we struggle because we’re resisting, fixing, changing, or even “transcending” our experiences. What shifts when instead of pushing our emotions away, we invite them closer in? What changes when we learn to relate to our emotions like a welcoming friend? And, what changes when we are able to access the place in which…
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Liberation Now: From the Progressive Path to Direct Experience
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December 1, 2019 In a progressive path approach to practice, we sometimes fall for the idea that liberation is in the future. We are conditioned to believe that we must end thinking, master practices, meditate for years, and purify our minds. Without realizing it, our beliefs can maintain the conditioning that stands in the way of our direct…
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Practice as a Way of Remembrance
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October 18, 2020 Many are referring to this time as apocalyptic. Fair enough. It can seem as though everywhere we turn a dismantling of some sort is in the works. While we might intellectually feel able to embrace the change upon us, for many it can be easy to fall into overwhelm, hopelessness, even despair. What do the…
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Cabbages & Condoms
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October 24, 2021 During this session we be explore life’s basic necessities and drives, and the critical difference between ‘getting along’ and ‘getting ahead.’ Our meditation practice will be based on the Wise-Heartedness Bhavana to help us cultivate skilful response to distractions in daily life. A transcript of this session is available here.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of May 2, 2022
This week’s theme is: Opportunities for Deepening Compassion and Wisdom. Dharma teachings and practices invite us to use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts. Rather than seeing the unwanted aspects of life as obstacles, we can relate to them as the raw material necessary for awakening genuine wisdom and compassion.
The cultivation of wisdom and compassion for ourselves leads naturally to compassion for others. True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings. -
How to structure your practice in life
Recorded :
March 25, 2018 Shinzen guides you through his “See, Hear, Feel” focus technique. This technique is designed to be applicable in any life situation — driving a car, having a conversation, working out, puttering around the house…. After that he gives a dharma talk describing a systematic procedure for “monasticizing” daily life. The goal of this program is…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of Sept 27, 2021
This week’s topic is “The Boundless Heart”.
“As a mother would risk her life
to protect her child, her only child,
even so should one cultivate a limitless heart
with regard to all beings.”
Karaniya Metta Sutta: translation Thānisarro Bhikku