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

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of 05 May, 2025

    We are delighted to have Ulla Koenig guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these offerings support and enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Touching Ground

    Whether it is the dynamics of the world that stir our hearts and minds, or personal challenges, as human beings we are confronted in many ways with the fragility of life. Touching ground, finding something to orient and trust in, is a deep need and yet not an easy endeavor. We dedicate this week to exploring the idea of taking refuge and translating it into a meaningful act that we can participate in no matter what.

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

    Read More

  • Ronya Banks

    You Are NOT Doomed: Breaking & Replacing Old Patterns

    Recorded : March 26, 2023

    You may have noticed that sometimes breaking old patterns is hard to do! But thanks to surviving ancient Buddhist teachings, we are NOT doomed to being stuck in the rut of the same old painful behavioral and cognitive patterns, and we can create new helpful patterns. This talk explores the nature of the conditioned mind…

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Leela Sarti – Week of Nov 8, 2021

    This week’s theme is “Deepening Heart Presence: Life, Dukkha, and Beyond”. We need heart presence in order to digest life experience. It takes a lot of heart to live with integrity, sensitivity and openness. Awakening compassion, courage, and kindness helps us embrace the challenges and the sorrow of life. This week we explore the possibility of being grounded in the depth of timeless presence in the midst of daily life. We will inquire how to live and love from silence and emptiness, being yourself in peace with others, and doing what needs to be done.

    Read More

  •

    Return to Oneness – Resting in Luminous Being

    Recorded : February 9, 2025

    Who is it that suffers? And why is asking that question valuable in our spiritual practice? In this Sunday session, we’ll explore these questions, and more. Following a guided meditation and teaching from Caverly’s book, The Heart of Who We Are, there will be plenty of time for discussion. All welcome.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    On Teachings and Teachers

    Recorded : March 17, 2018

    People often ask about the importance (or not) of working closely with a teacher. One can benefit greatly from general meditation instruction, but personalised guidance from someone who knows you and your practice well can be deeply helpful. In this session, Martin speaks about approaching teachers for guidance and about the dynamics of the teacher-student…

    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