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

Search Sangha Live

As wide as life and as open as space: practicing inclusivity.

With Martin Aylward recorded on March 22, 2015.

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

As we get familiar with the practice of meditation and the language of Dharma teachings, we can find ourselves getting comfortable, even complacent. Yet our practice in many ways is designed to make us uncomfortable! Designed to keep us open to ambiguity and uncertainty, to invite us to question and explore rather than to settle for answers or beliefs.

Martin explores different ways to keep our practice fresh, to stay open to what is actually happening, to maintain our curiosity about this remarkable and mysterious business of being human. We explore what it means to practice being inclusive in different realms – meditative, relational, social and cultural.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Liberation Now: From the Progressive Path to Direct Experience

    Recorded : December 1, 2019

    In a progressive path approach to practice, we sometimes fall for the idea that liberation is in the future. We are conditioned to believe that we must end thinking, master practices, meditate for years, and purify our minds. Without realizing it, our beliefs can maintain the conditioning that stands in the way of our direct…

    Read More

  •

    Glimpse of Being

    Recorded : July 11, 2021

    There are many ways to practice mindfulness, from the focused and deliberate to the expansive and relaxed. In this session, Diana teaches about natural awareness, which is a wide open, spacious, effortless awareness of awareness. Learn simple meditative shifts and ‘Glimpse Practices’ to connect with our radiant awareness and the innate capacity we all have…

    Read More

  • Yahel Avigur

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Yahel Avigur – Week of 28 July, 2025

    We are delighted that Yahel Avigur is leading our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Equanimity: An Unshakable Heart

    Equanimity is the unshakability of the heart in the face of all conditions and experiences. It embodies depth and spaciousness, fearlessness, responsiveness and natural compassion, rooted in virtue and insight. It is a natural capacity of the human heart, a home that is always there for us to return to. In this week of practice, we will nurture the conditions that allow equanimity to arise and mature. Supported by practice, community, and teachings from the Buddhist tradition, we will meditate to cultivate kindness and insight.

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

    Read More

  • Daigan Gaither

    Exploring Practice: What it is, and Why we do it

    Recorded : September 17, 2023

    What does it mean to practice? The term carries many interpretations and meanings. In this session, we won’t offer what practice should or shouldn’t mean for you; instead, we’ll embark on a journey of exploration. We’ll discover how each of us can find our practice in every moment.

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 22 September, 2025

    We’re grateful to have Nirmala Werner guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Still Heart: Cultivating Equanimity in an Unsteady World

    In a world marked by constant change, uncertainty, and emotional intensity, equanimity can seem like a distant ideal-or even a form of indifference. But in the Buddhist tradition, equanimity (upekkhā) is not cold or passive. It is the spacious, steady heart that knows how to stay open, grounded, and present with whatever life brings.

    In this week we will explore equanimity as a deep source of inner freedom-neither detached nor reactive, but wise, loving, and awake.

    Through daily reflection and embodied practice, we will ask:

    What is true equanimity, and what is it not?

    How can we meet change without losing our ground?

    How do we love and let go-at the same time?

    And how can we live with a still heart in a restless world?

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

    Read More

  • Wiebke Pausch

    Embracing the Radical Act of Rest

    Recorded : June 15, 2025

    Global challenges, economic uncertainty, and information overload can trigger fear and anxiety, leading us to overactivity and survival mode driven by guilt or inadequacy. The simple act of resting offers a powerful path to liberation: connecting deeply with the body, trusting gravity, and finding the ease that naturally supports an awakened mind. What holds us…

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Shireen Jilla – Week of 10 March, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Shireen Jilla guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May her teachings support and enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Ease And Simplicity Of Letting Go

    The invitation this week is to explore Wise Intention. When we lean into letting go, we experience the simple clarity it brings. Every moment we drop fussing, fretting and freaking out over our experience deepens our practice in our daily lives. The intention of opening our hearts and harmlessness leads us beautifully towards the bliss of blamelessness.

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

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 06 April, 2026

    This week’s theme is: The Spiral Path

    Practice often unfolds in spirals rather than straight lines. The path includes phases of clarity and confusion, opening and contraction. Again and again it turns and circles back. This week, we will explore how trust in the path can grow through these cycles, as we keep returning to awareness, patience, and the unfolding of the Dharma.

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

    Read More