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.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of March 14, 2022
This week’s theme is: Gathering in the Goodness. ‘Drop by drop the pot of goodness is filled.’ -Buddha. Gathering in community we become more than the sum of our parts. We are each supported by, and supporting others — meditating alone is far less easy. Just so, in each moment of mindfulness we gather body-heart-mind from distraction into presence and open possibilities for greater and greater well-being; not just for ourselves, but for all beings.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Jaya Rudgard – Week of May 31, 2021
This week’s topic is “Rediscovering Simplicity: Renunciation and the Art of Letting Go”. Renunciation is one of the ten paramis or ‘spiritual perfections’ considered most conducive to happiness and wellbeing, and yet we tend to understand it in ways that are not helpful. How in the age of peak stuff and peak busyness can we recover the wisdom of “less is more” in a way that re-energises us, lightens our burdens and helps us rediscover creativity and flow? This week we’ll look at this question from different angles with some suggestions for taking the exploration from our morning practice into the activities of our day.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of June 7, 2021
This week’s theme is: Mudita – Celebrating Aliveness. Our hearts possess infinite capacities: they can express friendship in the most surprising circumstances and turn with tenderness and care to those who suffer. But aside from kindness and compassion, there is also the potential for deep appreciation, ease, delight and joy within us. While such perspectives are always available, the access might be blocked by voices of doubt, shame or negativity. In the upcoming weekly sessions, we strengthen our capacity to find nourishing perspectives and to rejoice in the beauty within and around us with the help of guided meditations and practices for everyday life.
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For the love of mindfulness!
Recorded :
April 3, 2016 Mindfulness practice has burst out of its Buddhist origins and is hugely impacting the culture at large, particularly in the fields of education, healthcare and business. Some delight in the liberating possibilities of this, and some are concerned about what they see as the ‘dumbing down’ of the practice, or the exclusion of important areas…
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The practice of pleasure and delight (or the spiritual art of having fun).
Recorded :
April 22, 2018 Dharma teachings importantly emphasise suffering, compassion, renunciation, desire, non-reactivity, peacefulness. All these are potent themes, yet ones which can make our practice feel overly heavy, unnecessarily serious, maybe even uptight! Dharma practice equally points us towards a playful nature, light-heartedness and ease, delight and the capacity to really enjoy life. Especially when we can get…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of Sept 20, 2021
We’re fortunate that Martin Aylward has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK this week. To find out more about Martin, and view his other recordings on the platform, click here.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christopher Titmuss – Week of 17 February, 2025
We’re delighted to have Christopher Titmuss guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and deepen your practice.
This week’s theme is: Deep Psychology Of Karma
Join us as we explore the Buddha’s profound teachings on karma (kamma in Pali), a central aspect of Buddhist teaching that’s often misunderstood or overlooked. Christopher will guide us in examining karma not through abstract theory, but through our own direct experience and practice.
Together, we’ll investigate the intimate connection between our intentions, actions, and their results – both in meditation and daily life. We’ll look deeply into what creates binding patterns of karma, both wholesome and unwholesome, and discover what actions can free us from these patterns altogether.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of Sept 12, 2022
This week’s topic is (Be)Come As You Are. Our driven-ness, our ruminating thoughts, and our feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety never allow us to simply ‘be’. They evolve around a sense of identity , a process the Buddha called selfing (bhava), a form of suffering (dukkha). We are endlessly trapped in a narrative of who we think we ought to be, were in the past and should be in the future.
We will dedicate our shared time together to build an awareness of these processes and find alternative ways to relate to the many experiences of life.
