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

Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind

With Shaila Catherine recorded on April 24, 2022.

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

Shaila will be sharing teachings from her new book, Beyond Distraction. This talk will introduce five pragmatic strategies to help you overcome distraction in meditation and develop clarity in relationships, work, and daily life. The strategies are: replacing, examining, ignoring, investigating, and resolving. You can learn to unlock the incredible capacities of your mind to think clearly, reflect deeply, discern reality, and know what is actually happening in your life.

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

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of Mar 11, 2024

    This week’s topic is “To Be on the Road Without Leaving Home”. Zen Master Hakuin reveals an apparent tension between movement and stillness in this statement. What may the road refer to? What is called home? Sophie Boyer will lead our Daily Meditations this week, inviting us to engage with this paradoxical dynamic. We’ll discover that stability and ground can become more spacious in every situation, every experience, and every condition. How it is possible to discover, or re-discover, home … endlessly.

    Read More

  • Martine Batchelor

    Mindfulness of sympathetic joy.

    Sympathetic Joy (mudita) is one of the four noble qualities recommended by the Buddha on the path of awakening. Such joy arises from appreciating the good fortune of self and others.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of July 6

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, July 6 Being all expression of being Wednesday, July 8 I am whole Friday, July 10 Resting in gratitude Tuesday,…

    Read More

  • The Conscientious Heart: An exploration of Appamada and the Elephant’s Footprint

    We will explore through practice and teachings the importance of “appamada” or heedfulness, conscientiousness, or what Stephen Batchelor has translated as care. Appamada has been called the path to the deathless. ” Just as the footprints of all living beings with legs can be encompassed by the footprint of the elephant, and the elephant’s footprint is…

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of Feb 21, 2022

    This week’s topic is: Deeply Rooted, Fully Alive. This week we will explore the profound, yet accessible teachings of equipoise and equanimity. One of the best images for this sensitive balancing relationship with all things is a deeply rooted and flexible tree in a windy storm. The tree, equipoised, does not resist the wind, bending and yielding to its force. Yet, well nourished from the root, it returns to noble uprightness as soon as the pressure passes.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of May 25

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, May 25 Releasing conditioned processes of suffering (part 3) Wednesday, May 27 Knowing awareness, experiencing being Friday, May 29 Embracing…

    Read More

  • Leslie Booker

    Embodied Wisdom: The Self-Preservation of Activism

    Yes, the world is on fire. And, how do we respond to the rage, anger, and fear that can engulf us? How do we utilize these emotions as catalysts that can move us into action that doesn’t burn us up and destroy us? We investigate the Self-Preservation of Activism by feeling into our body wisdom…

    Read More