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

Awakening Joy: Practice as a Path of Happiness

With James Baraz recorded on January 13, 2019.

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

Joy is both a Factor of Enlightenment and one of the four Divine Abodes. Today, as we are bombarded with news that heightens our fear and sadness about the world, more than ever it’s vital to understand the importance of joy as a central aspect of spiritual practice. We need to remember how to stay connected to that place inside that makes life worth living. In this session we explore principles and practices from the teachings to incline the mind towards true well-being.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of 13 January, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Milla Gregor guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: How to respond to an unjust burning world (without losing your mind)

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • The Power of Relational Awareness

    In this session, Oren Jay Sofer shares reflections on the basics of Mindful Communication, with particular focus on the internal foundations of successful communication. The talk explores some of the ways our silent contemplative practice can support our interpersonal relationships, while the Q&A delves into more specific issues of conversation and relationships.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Leela Sarti – Week of April 18, 2022

    This week’s theme is “Timeless Presence in Daily Life: Being Yourself, Being at Home”. This week we will be exploring the possibility of being grounded in the depth of timeless presence in the midst of daily life. How to live a full life from silence and emptiness? How can we feel at home in our own skin and in the very circumstances of our life? How can we awaken an awareness and a heart that embraces life, dukkha and beyond? The grace of presence reveals the possibility of settling in reality and living with ease.

    Read More

  • Practice as a Way of Remembrance

    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…

    Read More

  • Moving Beyond the Myth of Loneliness

    What changes as we consciously turn toward our suffering, rather than away? We are conditioned to experience ourselves as separate from life, but in that outward gaze, we often overlook an experience of belonging that is inherent. How does our habit of seeking shift when we recognize that what we long for can never actually…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of April 8, 2024

    This week’s theme is “All Life is Practice”. In this week of exploring the four noble truths together, we will take a good look at the eightfold path and relate it to our own practice. Together we explore how all of our daily life can be seen as a part of a spiritual journey and heal the dualism between “practice” and “life”. May this week provide us with an inspiring expansion of what practice means for us.

    Read More

  • Human Body – Earth Body – One Body

    The Earth speaks to us through our bodies. By contemplating the elements we come to understand that all life on Earth is simply interbeing. Through this sensed understanding we begin to transform human supremacy into human response-ability, a deepening of our inborn capacity for a healthy regenerative relationship with ourselves and our world. Quote: The…

    Read More

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    When did you stop breathing?

    We could say that the Buddha was teaching us to breath again. It’s said that the prince Siddhartha was sitting under a Bodhi tree, practicing the anapanasati (the mindfulness of breathing) when he gained enlightenment and became awake, a Buddha. He was aware of the whole experience of breathing. Through breathing he trained the mind…

    Read More