Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Embracing the First Noble Truth: Dukkha and Destructive Emotions

With Dave Smith recorded on January 24, 2021.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

Coming to terms with the teaching and implications of the first noble truth can be challenging, confusing and ongoing. When we are unable to do the hard work of completing the task of the first truth, to embrace Dukkha, we become vulnerable to destructive emotions.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Brian Dean Williams

    Natural Wisdom

    In the modern world, it’s easy to forget our intimate connection with all of life. But with recent global events and movements, we’ve been both confronted and inspired by the deep impact our actions have on one another. From a Buddhist perspective, being aware is our true nature. What role might the natural world play…

    Read More

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of 18 November, 2024

    We’re delighted to have Sophie Boyer guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they bring peace and depth to your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Fruits of Attention

    What difference does a simple reorientation of attention do to this moment? How will it condition what comes next? Every day this week there will be an opportunity for the fruits of attention to be revealed such as care, generosity, and morality. Let’s explore this together.

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of December 12, 2022

    This week’s topic is “Interwoven and Free”

    The Buddha invited us to investigate our experience moment by moment. One of the key things we uncover as we do this is that separation is an illusion, and that we are deeply interwoven and interconnected with all beings and all things. This week we will disentangle the habitual knots of isolation and ignorance and open to the freedom available as we open our exploration of inter-being.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of July 6

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, July 6 Being all expression of being Wednesday, July 8 I am whole Friday, July 10 Resting in gratitude Tuesday,…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Practicing for the love of it.

    Before the session Martin wrote: “A Burmese teacher once told a friend of mine to always enjoy his practice. We love meditation in theory, and we want to grow and transform, and we certainly would like to be liberated from our suffering. And yet! We easily turn meditation into a chore, and feel discouraged by…

    Read More

  • Pamela Weiss

    Faith: Cultivating an Undivided Life

    The divisiveness we see around us begins in the binary mind: self and other, me and you, us and them. In each moment, we like and don’t like, pick and choose, evaluate and judge. How can we untangle this tangle? This talk will explore how practice helps liberate us from our views and opinions, and…

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Apr 29 – 3 May, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.

    Read More