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

  • The Importance of the Uplifting Experience

    The Buddha taught about life’s suffering—known as ‘dukkha’—and how our personal, social and global issues can weigh us down. Yet dukkha does not have the inherent power to stop ‘sukkha,’ or happiness, from breaking through. In this session, we will explore ‘upliftment’, and the joys that keep our spirit alive. Upliftment of the human spirit…

    Read More

  • Sitting with Pointlessness – Living with Potentiality

    During a recent retreat, the teachers’ instruction was to hold the question ‘What is this?’ in mind. While sitting on the cushion, the thought struck me that my life is futile! I am genetically programmed for survival and sex; everything else is just distracting window-dressing. This talk will explore the journey from the apparent ‘futility’…

    Read More

  • Liberation Now: From the Progressive Path to Direct Experience

    In a progressive path approach to practice, we sometimes fall for the idea that liberation is in the future. We are conditioned to believe that we must end thinking, master practices, meditate for years, and purify our minds. Without realizing it, our beliefs can maintain the conditioning that stands in the way of our direct…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Ask Me Anything: Everything You Wanted to Know about Dharma, but were too Embarrassed / Deluded / Enlightened to Ask

    In this session, Martin opened up to dharma questions from the Sangha. He invited questions that were personal or impersonal, about technical aspects of Buddhism or the wider field of Dharma practice, about anything between heaven and earth including both; about life, love and liberation; work, sex, money, power; the depths of meditation and the…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of June 15

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, June 15 Clearing and grounding breath for anxiety and fear Wednesday, June 17 Chakra balancing breath practice Friday, June 19…

    Read More

  • Lisa Ernst

    The Gap and The Second Noble Truth

    There’s a moment before craving takes hold – a gap. In that space, we gradually cultivate choice in how to respond. This talk explores the Second Noble Truth: how reaching and pushing away pulls us from the present, and how the practice of recognizing the gap – whether a split second or something larger –…

    Read More