Consider that your presence on the cushion doesn’t guarantee balance. It’s what you bring to the cushion that matters. The same could be true of the fullness of our lives. It’s what we bring to it. What shifts when we focus on creating a life of certainty? A life of certainty that whether you are in the darkest spot of a tunnel or whether you are in the blazing sunlight of an open meadow, your inner state doesn’t change. Your understanding of yourself doesn’t change. It is in your consciousness that spaciousness exists.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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The Procurement of Kindness and Sanity
Recorded :
April 26, 2020 Jill writes: “We all possess the capacity to be very aware of our internal landscapes of body, heart and mind. And fortunately, with practice, we can tend to what we see, feel and know as it all arises in the moment, rather than days, months or decades later. It sure saves a lot of pain…
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Cultivating self-compassion
Recorded :
May 21, 2017 So many of us struggle with self-hatred and self-judgment. Self-compassion is so deeply needed in these times, and brings together mindfulness, loving kindness practices, and a recognition of our shared humanity. This session explores the cultivation of this core set of practices.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of 04 November, 2024
This week’s theme is: Love’s Fullness
Mindfulness is a practice of remaining present, open and loving to the deepest truth of this moment as it arises and dissolves. It invites us into an intimate, warm and embodied relationship with life, where each moment is sensed, felt and known with love. The four foundations of mindfulness return us to love’s fullness.
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The Beauty of Impermanence, a Doorway to Freedom
Recorded :
March 15, 2026 “If we were never to fade away…how things would lose their power to move us. Because we will fade away, we are moved, because we are moved, we realise more deeply that we will fade away.”– Keith Dowman If I had to sum up Buddhism in one word, it might be impermanence. Often, it’s impermanence…
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The freeing of human consciousness: from seeing the world ‘out there’, separate and alien, to directly knowing, feeling, and living the intimacy of all things
Recorded :
February 18, 2018 The Shurangama Sutra, which points out the foundations of Zen practice, discusses the essential nature of mind as the “primal essence of consciousness that brings forth all conditions.” Implied is the heart-mind (citta) both profoundly intimate with all things while at the same time free and independent of all things. How is it to live…
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The Compass of Wise Intention
Recorded :
September 21, 2025 In times marked socially by uncertainty, injustice, polarization, and sometimes overwhelm, in the midst of the typical personal joys and sorrows of our day to day experiences, it can be difficult to know how to act-or even how to keep the heart steady. The Buddha’s teaching on Wise Intention (sammā saṅkappa) offers a compass, a…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Miles Kessler – Week of February 19, 2024
What is your relationship to fear? When fear arises, is your tendency to collapse into it, or to resist and struggle with it? Or do you deny it? How do you know if you need to face fear with courage, or simply surrender to its inevitability? What does it mean to practice with fear? In this week of Daily Meditations, you are invited to join Miles in an exploration into the human experience of fear, and how it arises in your life, relationships, and practice. You will learn how to work with fear by cultivating courage and surrender, the core qualities of the Spiritual Warrior.
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Finding Wholeness & Healing Within Heartbreak
Recorded :
March 1, 2026 Heartbreak is inevitable, yet reconciliation isn’t always possible. Rashid’s session offers a path toward healing when face-to-face forms of reconciliation fall short or aren’t accessible. Through one of Rashid’s new practices, with guided visualization and contemplative work, participants explore how to tend internal wounds, honor grief, and reclaim wholeness—even without external resolution. Within a loving…
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