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

Search Sangha Live

Beyond the Self-Improvement Project

With Oren Jay Sofer recorded on April 25, 2021.

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

It’s common to come to the spiritual path seeking relief from psychological suffering or emotional pain. The modern wellness industry presents mindfulness and meditation as the ultimate antidote to stress and personal foibles. Yet the Buddhist path is about something far deeper than stress reduction or having an agreeable personality. In this session, we’ll explore the value of seeking relief from personal stress, the pitfalls of approaching meditation as a self-improvement project, and the true promise of the Buddha’s freedom.

(Poem read by Oren during the session: Free and Easy: A Spontaneous Vajra Song, by Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche)

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

Tags: awareness and presence impermanence self and non-self wisdom

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Mark Coleman Profile Photo

    Discovering the Joy of Sensory Awareness: Mindfulness in Nature

    Recorded : February 12, 2023

    When we turn our attention to the sensory, natural world around us, mindfulness practice can become easeful and expansive. Nature allures awareness through her beauty, and range of dynamic, enchanting experience. In this session we will practice cultivating attention to our sense experience, and discovering joy, peace and wonder in this very moment. Tune in from any peaceful environment outdoors with an internet connection, or indoors, ideally with a view of the outdoors.

    Read More

  •

    Awakening to the New Year: creating conscious intentions

    Recorded : January 7, 2018

    When we move on behalf of the recognition of our true nature, a conscious intention becomes a way to align all aspects of our lives with our deepest understanding and recognition of truth. A conscious intention is seeped in possibility. While it may even look similar on some level, on the surface, to a conditioned…

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    Awakening Joy: Practice as a Path of Happiness

    Recorded : January 13, 2019

    Joy is both a Factor of Enlightenment and one of the four Divine Abodes. Today, as we are bombarded with news that heightens our fear and sadness about the world, more than ever it’s vital to understand the importance of joy as a central aspect of spiritual practice. We need to remember how to stay…

    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

  •

    Human Body – Earth Body – One Body

    Recorded : May 10, 2026

    The Earth speaks to us through our bodies. By contemplating the elements we come to understand that all life on Earth is simply interbeing. Through this sensed understanding we begin to transform human supremacy into human response-ability, a deepening of our inborn capacity for a healthy regenerative relationship with ourselves and our world. Quote: The…

    Read More

  •

    Climate Code Red

    Recorded : November 7, 2021

    However challenging, we are in these times because we need to be here. We are here to release from what no longer serves and to infuse a new story with clear, wise, conscious intention; a story about building our collective resilience as we rise, with compassion, to save what we can.

    Read More