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

  • The Beauty of Being

    Leela says: “Over the years my interest in awakening has be reformulated as how to be a real human being. In this session I invite you to explore, with me, the possibility of being grounded in the natural goodness of being. We will inquire how to live a full life from the ground of presence,…

    Read More

  • Miles Kessler

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Miles Kessler – Week of July 29, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Cutting Through To Ultimate Reality”. The word “Dhamma” means ultimate reality, the absolute, or universal principles. This refers to the 3 universal characteristics of conditioned phenomena, and to Nibbana, the unconditioned. In this week of practice we will explore how insight into the Dhamma arises in meditation, and get practical instructions to cultivate the conditions for “Cutting Through To Ultimate Reality”.

    Read More

  • Wholehearted living.

    How do we transform habits of dissatisfaction and distraction, and invite real spaciousness and openness in our day-to-day lives? Becoming intimate, moment by moment, with living reality expands our life-perspective and attunes us to what really matters in life. Leela will explore the nature of love and the implications of loving whatever arises.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The Jewel of Sangha: We all need Community, Support and Love

    Martin writes: “Sangha is about community, support and love; it is one of the 3 jewels (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha) of our practice. But in the individualistic cultures and atomised structures in which many of us live, sangha too often gets inadequate attention. This is especially true in the Vipassana / Insight meditation tradition, because while silent meditation…

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Resting in Receptivity – Opening Up to What Liberates

    This session is an embodied, compassionate exploration through our body-mind-heart into life. The door is open. What we long for is already there. This practise invites you to undo and deeply rest into the wonder of an receptive presence. BY LAL DED, TRANSLATED BY JANE HIRSHFIELD:I was passionate,filled with longing,I searchedfar and wide. But the…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of March 28, 2022

    This week’s topic is Shelter from the Storm. Whether it is restlessness, worry, anxiety, panic, worry or rumination, all aspects of fear have one thing in common: they rob us of our peace of mind. If fear governs our perspective, we are focused on that which is potentially problematic. Unable to settle down and rest, we often feel exhausted by the relentless activity of our mind. The Buddha invited us to find in our practice ‘a Shelter, a Harbour, a Refuge’. In this week together, we’ll explore the underlying dynamics of fear, learn ways to soothe our minds and gain access to a sense of safety and peacefulness right here and right now.

    Read More

  • Bart van Melik

    What Feeds your Craving?

    The Buddha discovered that craving is the cause by which stress comes into play. Letting go of this constant pursuing of our desires is possible. Befriending this human and natural craving needs the power of kind awareness and an ongoing reflection: What feeds my craving? And: What feeds letting go?

    Read More

  • The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love

    When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion. When we know ourselves as a whole which subsumes everything, we cease to diminish or dismiss the mystery of being human….

    Read More