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.
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Practicing metta vipassana
Recorded :
May 14, 2017 In this talk Dave discusses the process of integrating heart practices within the four foundations of mindfulness. Mindfulness practice unites the steadiness of concentration with the immediacy of moment to moment experience. As we learn to collect the body and mind, intuitive wisdom arises. This allows us to open to the truth of each moment’s…
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Settled Form, Steady Heart: Qigong for Mindful Presence
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October 26, 2025 When our physical energy feels restless or flat, it becomes harder to meet our inner experience with care and attention. This is why embodied practices such as qigong and mindful breathing are valuable: they help settle our body, making it far easier for our heart to find a steadier, more skillful unfolding. Please join this…
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An Open Heart in Hell
Recorded :
September 4, 2022 After a summer of extreme heat, drought and fire, we may well enter the autumn wondering how to manage the grief at our fragile and collapsing ecology. Taking the title An Open Heart in Hell from Nick Mulvey’s recent song “Prayer of my Own“, we’ll use this session to honour the pains of the heart without getting…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of Feb 14, 2022
Daily meditations with Martin Aylward.
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Skillful Ways to Work with Difficult Thoughts in Meditation
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November 21, 2021 There’s a misconception that thoughts are a hindrance to deep meditation and tranquility. Especially during this ongoing challenging time, certain thoughts may be persistent and difficult to release. Yet, thoughts themselves are not the problem; it’s our relationship to them that determines whether or not they impede our meditation. In this session, we will explore a number of skillful ways to work with difficult or persistent thoughts in meditation to support inner well-being and clarity.
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The Beauty of Impermanence, a Doorway to Freedom
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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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Peace in this very everyday life.
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January 31, 2016 In the best of circumstances the path of life is a bumpy road. The practice of embodied presence opens the possibility to understand and transform our habits of dissatisfaction and distraction, and invites spaciousness and openness in our day-to-day lives. Becoming intimate, moment by moment, with living reality may expand our life-perspective and attune us…
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Imagination: An Integral Aspect of Liberating the Heart
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May 21, 2023 Our heart/mind is naturally creative; it foresees, remembers, dreams, and perceives. The products of our imagination shape our intentions, expanding the realm of possibilities beyond what we’ve learned, seen, or experienced thus far. We can give ourselves permission to imagine and co-create our lives. And once this is cultivated and the doors of perception are…
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