With Earth Day here, James reflects on the preciousness and generosity of our wonderful planet, the current situation of climate change and how our Dharma practice can help us transform despair into meaningful and inspiring action.
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On Meeting Conflict and the Incompatible
Recorded :
December 11, 2023 “When you can’t go forward, when you can’t go back, and when you can’t stand still – where do you go? This is your place of non-abiding. The things you love and the things you hate: these are your teachers.” – Ajahn Chah How do we perceive conflict? We often see it as disturbing, but…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of May 27 – 31, 2024
This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.
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Who Am I?
Recorded :
March 10, 2019 “Who Am I?” is a fundamental question. You have to live the question, day in and day out. You cannot think through an answer. The self (‘I’ and ‘my’) lands on objects, voluntarily or involuntarily. Primary objects of interest include forms, feelings, perceptions, formations of mind/speech/body and consciousness (mindfulness, awareness, concentration and meditation). The self…
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Practice and Prejudice: Waking up to our reality blinkers
Recorded :
January 6, 2019 Martin writes: “Do you remember that Youtube video ‘Awareness test’ from a few years ago, where you’re asked to pay attention to one thing (passes made by the team in white) and you end up completely missing something else? (check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 – it only takes 30 seconds) We perceive reality in accordance with…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of June 27, 2022
Daily meditations with Martin Aylward.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Nov 27 – 1 Dec, 2023
This week’s topic is “Longing for Belonging; Becoming Intimate with Expansion and Contraction”. Although people are more connected than ever through technology, there seems to be a global trance of “not belonging”. In this week’s sessions we will explore how we separate from our own selves and from others, and above all how we can come home to all our parts and sink back into a sense of belonging.
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Asking Better Questions
Recorded :
December 13, 2020 In this session author and communication trainer Oren Jay Sofer offered guidance and reflections on how to approach difficult situations like stress from the pandemic and conflict with family with more skill, clarity and compassion. (Please note that this live stream experienced some technical difficulties, so the recording has been edited accordingly.)
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The Two Fundamental Roots
Recorded :
January 25, 2026 I reflect this Sunday on the profound Surangama Sutra teaching of the Two Fundamental Roots: The root of “beginningless birth and death,” and the “primal bright essence of consciousness.” The Buddha warns that not knowing these two essential principles renders one’s spiritual efforts into a doomed futility, like “cooking sand in the hope of creating…
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