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

An Open Heart in Hell

With Martin Aylward recorded on September 4, 2022.

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

After a summer of extreme heat, drought and fire, we may well enter the autumn wondering how to manage the grief at our fragile and collapsing ecology. Taking the title An Open Heart in Hell from Nick Mulvey’s recent song “Prayer of my Own“, we’ll use this session to honour the pains of the heart without getting swallowed up by them, and will reflect on wisdom, fearlessness and love amidst the deepening crises of our world.

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

Discussion

One thought on “An Open Heart in Hell

  1. Thank you Martin.. This practice has been helpful. . Opening the heart ……today, I experienced my own decomposition… Embracing imperfection..Rosie

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Alexis Santos

    Natural awareness: practicing in daily life.

    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…

    Read More

  • 2026: Where to Now? Dharma Practice in Times of Crisis

    As we enter a year marked by global uncertainty, collective grief, and profound transition, many wonder: How do we practice now? We’ll explore how Dharma can serve as a living refuge, not as withdrawal from the world, but as a steady ground for clarity, compassion, and ethical response. And how response to suffering, our own…

    Read More

  • Is there compassion for the self? Go deep. Is compassion the end of self?

    The Dharma flies with two wings – compassion and wisdom. Compassion emerges from a liberated wisdom. That happens when constructs in the mind lose their significance. The emptiness of self and the emptiness of dependency on feeling tones take priority. This talk also explores the contraction of compassion into self interest. The liberation of compassion…

    Read More

  • Ralph Steele

    Using the five aggregates as a strategy.

    The aggregates are a reference to our sense of self. Working with form, feeling, perception, identification, and consciousness as we go through our daily lives will support equanimity. Most importantly, it will help us work with emotions with greater efficiency.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christopher Titmuss – Week of June 6, 2022

    This week’s theme is: From Mindfulness to Clear Seeing. Clear seeing includes the past, present and future. Clear seeing includes dependent arising conditions for all three fields, so we do not become dependent on the present moment to realise the timeless. A timeless, limitless liberation embraces all three fields of time. Teachings this week will include the immense value and the limits of the here and now.

    Read More

  • Meditating and speaking: simultaneously practicing Sila, Samadhi and Panna

    The communicative loop of listening and speaking forms a powerful karmic workshop. Language taps into our karmic archive, sankhara. It reaches other people and, if they are listening, there is mind-to-mind contact. Relational contact is intrinsically powerful because humans are intrinsically relational: when we engage together, our mutual responsiveness amplifies our efforts. Speaking and listening…

    Read More

  • Certainty in an uncertain world.

    Consider that your presence on the cushion doesn’t guarantee balance. It’s what you bring to the cushion that matters. The same could be true of the fullness of our lives. It’s what we bring to it. What shifts when we focus on creating a life of certainty? A life of certainty that whether you are…

    Read More