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

Search Sangha Live

Daily Meditation Recordings, with James Rafael – Week of January 8, 2024

James Rafael

James Rafael

We’re fortunate that James Rafael has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK. To find out more about James, and to view his other contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Recordings will be posted by the end of the day of the live session.

 

This week’s topic is “New Year Habits and Hindrances”

 

In this week’s sessions we’ll explore how engaging with the Buddha’s teachings on the ‘5 Hindrances’ can help establish or deepen the habit of a daily meditation practice.

 

If you’re new to meditation, this framework offers ways to engage with common challenges we may face; “I can’t sit still’, “My mind is just too busy”, “I’m just not sure if this is working”.

 

If you have a consistent, established practice, revisiting the hindrances can be a gateway to access deeper levels of concentration (samatha), and the subsequent, often profound, insight (vipassana) which follows.

 

The 5 hindrances (obstacles) and the Buddha’s Pond

January 8, 2024

Hindrances in the suttas (ancient texts); tips for breaking / forming habits

January 9, 2024

Challenges and compassion; tips for working with sleepiness or restlessness

January 10, 2024

Doubt, shame, and the story of Mara

January 11, 2024

Deepening our practice, the forest pool, and habits

January 12, 2024

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Wide Dharma, wide path.

    Recorded : November 13, 2016

    Many of us long to experience the Buddhist path in all of our lives, but really only feel its aliveness when we meditate. There’s an incompleteness, a gap, when it comes to our everyday activities and our relationships, where we catch only a whiff of the truths of suffering and the Path. But when we…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of May 1, 2023

    This week’s topic is “A Path of Wisdom and Compassion”. Practicing Insight Meditation supports an understanding of how wellbeing is nourished, and how ill-being is conditioned. Attending to our own heart and mind with compassion and wisdom opens possibilities of freedom. Over this week of practice, we’ll develop wisdom and compassion, exploring creative responses to habits that appear to obscure these beautiful qualities.

    Read More

  • David Cabrera

    A Return To Naturalness

    Recorded : September 29, 2024

    From pure emptiness the wondrous appears… In the session we will explore different somatic approaches to cultivate a sense of calm and ease. An invitation into insight meditation and letting go into a natural state of flow.

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of Jan 3, 2022

    This week’s topic is: Beginning to See More Possibilities.

    The Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, said: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” With a beginner’s possibilities we can release our heart’s wholesome aspirations. Let’s engender a beginners spirit, and manifest our innate potential for freedom and well-being: embodying a saint’s patience to start again; an adventurer’s openness to step out of constricted views; and a creative’s zeal to reimagine ourselves and our world”

    Read More

  • Paul Burrows

    Death and the dance of self.

    Recorded : November 8, 2015

    The Buddhadharma is bursting with ways to find helpful perspectives on our troubles. With awareness and investigation we can unpack the nub of clinging which keeps us bound to old and unhelpful ways of seeing ourselves and the world. As we learn to work with self-centred clinging, we make ourselves available to a liberated perspective…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Dharma, Sex, Intimacy and Covid

    Recorded : September 6, 2020

    We are more physically isolated during these days of Covid. Less physical contact, less access even to each others smiles beneath the masks we wear to care for each others’ health. Contact and intimacy are deeply important to humans, and in this session Sangha Live founding and guiding teacher Martin Aylward explores different forms of…

    Read More

  • Miles Kessler

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Miles Kessler – Week of June 5, 2023

    This week’s topic is “Cultivating The 5 Spiritual Powers In Your Life”. The “5 Spiritual Powers” are mental faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, & wisdom. In this week of daily meditation, each day you will experience one of the 5 spiritual powers, and you will learn the best practices for awakening, developing, and cultivating these mental powers in your practice, and in your life.

    Read More