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

Clear Presence, Sweet Absence

With Kim Allen recorded on March 1, 2020.

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

Dharma practice encourages us to see the present moment clearly – to meet and respond to it well. What is here in this moment? Another dimension of practice is to learn to appreciate absence: What is this moment free from? Having skill in both these dimensions brings us closer to the joy and peace that the Buddha spoke of.

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

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of 09 June, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Zohar Lavie guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Steadiness, Clarity and Care in Challenging Times

    During this week of practice, we will explore and practice the boundless qualities of compassion and equanimity. Compassion as the heart’s capacity to open and attend to suffering, and equanimity as the heart’s ability to face life in all its aspects with clarity and steadiness.
    These two beautiful qualities complement and nourish each other. They support us to meet experience and act within it in beneficial ways, even in difficult times.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Time and Timelessness: Finding Refuge, Finding Inspiration

    Certain moments, events and experiences open our awareness beyond the everyday to a sense of something more eternally present. Meditation points our attention to just this place, which the poet TS Eliot called ‘the point of intersection of the timeless with time’. Contemplating life from such a perspective we can often find fresh resources of…

    Read More

  • Expanding our Understanding of Loving Kindness Practice

    Many of us have habitual ways of practicing loving kindness (metta), Some of us love loving kindness practice, and others find kindness practice difficult, or merely routine. Join Diana to explore a more expansive approach to loving kindness where we learn at least three different types of kindness practice. We’ll discover the roots of these…

    Read More

  • Bart van Melik

    Trusting Impermanence

    ‘All things fall apart’ was the Buddha’s last teaching before passing away. How can we live peacefully with this universal and challenging truth? In this session, we’ll practice how attuning to change supports letting go.

    Read More

  • Faith, Hope and Love on the Dharma Path

    “Join me and the sangha for meditation, reflections and conversation to resource, encourage and uplift the heart as we engage with the challenges of our lives. Everyone is welcome.” – Jaya

    Read More

  • Nicola Redfern

    Not Knowing is Most Intimate

    The Buddha spoke often about the danger of clinging to views and opinions. He recommended we avoid clinging, even to the dharma and to “right view.” In a world increasingly torn apart by our adherence to differing viewpoints, how do we navigate the tension between knowing and not knowing? Our exploration will draw from the…

    Read More

  • The Path of the Bodhisattva: Choosing a Life of Kindness

    The path of the Bodhisattva asks us to dedicate ourselves to the well-being of all sentient beings – to show up as best as we can for ourselves, each other, and the natural world with a quality of no-matter-whatness. It’s an impossible though necessary task. Yet the teachings and practices of everyday dharma offer accessible,…

    Read More