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

Aditthana: The art of commitment

With Martin Aylward recorded on January 3, 2021.

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

New year’s resolutions are often unrealistically ambitious and doomed to failure. In this first Sangha Live class of the year, our founding teacher Martin Aylward explores the art of wise commitment; how to refine what one is committing to in a way that is useful, precise, realistic and time-boundaried; elements that allow us to align our actions with our intentions in a way that is workable and empowering.

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

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Transforming the poisons.

    Buddha points out the three main ways we get pulled into activity and self-contraction – Greed, Hatred and Delusion – which Martin often translates as Desire, Defense and Distraction. This class explores creative ways of meeting these forces in everyday life, and explores powerful reflections for each of the three.

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of September 5, 2022

    This week’s topic is “Awakening into Experience Here and Now”. “You shouldn’t chase after the past
    or place expectations on the future.
    What is past
    is left behind.
    The future
    is as yet unreached.
    Whatever quality is present
    you clearly see right there,
    right there.
    Not taken in,
    unshaken,
    that’s how you develop the heart.” (MN 131)

    The essence of the Buddha’s teachings lies in these words. Unshakability and freedom are at the heart of awakening, they are what we cultivate in our practice. This week we will practice turning to our experience in ways that wake us up, right here and now.

    Read More

  • A Relational Dhamma Integrates the Arahat and Bodhisattva Visions of the Buddhist Path (and why this matters to our living Dhamma path)

    Gregory writes: “The early Buddhist vision of the arahat ideal is sometimes taken to imply that individual awakening is the sole aim of the Path whereas the later Buddhist vision of the bodhisattva ideal centers on the liberation of all beings. The gap between practice aimed at solitary awakening and practice aimed at liberation of…

    Read More

  • Ronya Banks

    Untangling the Tangle

    The Buddha often described our practice in terms of untangling the tangles we find ourselves caught in. Together, let us uncover the primary tangles we get tangled in and how we can use our Buddhist practices to become free from these tangles. “A tangle within, a tangle without, people are entangled in a tangle. Gotama,…

    Read More

  • The Practice of Blamelessness

    We are deeply conditioned to blame; it’s a survival strategy. Though it can feel necessary, maybe even fruitful to part of us, blaming arises out of suffering, and leads to more suffering. The process of blame is not required but we don’t always know how to put it down. How do we let it go?

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The Unshakeable Heart: Liberation as the Ultimate Resilience

    Is it possible to live and love freely amidst the greed, aggression and dysfunction of the world?⁠⁠Amidst so much suffering, can you nourish joy, lightness and laughter?⁠⁠When it feels as if you’re drowning, might it be that you are floating in an ocean of blessings?⁠⁠In times of political polarisation and dysfunction, broken societal modelling, a…

    Read More