We’re fortunate that Martin Aylward has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK. To find out more about Martin, and to view his other contributions to Sangha Live, click here.
Recordings are posted 24 – 36 hours after they are first streamed.
This week’s topic is “Wholehearted Presence”. Meeting experience as it unfolds with presence and interest, we uncover the wellbeing and freedom available to us on the Dharma path. Through this week’s exploration we will open to what supports a wholehearted approach to practice, and understand what is nourished and cultivated when we relate to experience in this way.
This week’s topic is (Be)Come As You Are. Our driven-ness, our ruminating thoughts, and our feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety never allow us to simply ‘be’. They evolve around a sense of identity , a process the Buddha called selfing (bhava), a form of suffering (dukkha). We are endlessly trapped in a narrative of who we think we ought to be, were in the past and should be in the future.
We will dedicate our shared time together to build an awareness of these processes and find alternative ways to relate to the many experiences of life.
Recorded :
Racism remains one of the most rooted and painful impasses of our time. Why is this so? And what does this have to do with you? In her talk, drawing from her recent publication, Ruth explores an understanding of our individual and collective racial conditioning and its social proliferation, and how mindfulness provides a foundation…
Recorded :
Today’s session is the third in a special run of three consecutive sessions with Martin, where he looks deeply at the nature of experience through Buddha’s profound descriptions of reality – Impermanence, Emptiness, Non self-existence. The classes point directly to how these themes can come alive in our practice and understanding, looking at the personal,…
Recorded :
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…
Recorded :
Softness and spaciousness can be cultivated and called upon when needed.The sensations of softness are reflective of ease and equanimity – the feeling of spaciousness, reflective of non-clinging. Both create a natural letting go, flow and arising of love, kindness and tenderness.Embodiment offers a broad range of skillful means. We’ll invite these qualities and directly…
Recorded :
Power matters when free from any corruption of mind, gross or subtle. We need to develop our power rather than feel powerless, indecisive or exploitive. Power emerges from unification of our whole being, focussing on a priority and sometimes engaging in a level of boldness. The Buddha referred to four areas to develop inner power…
Recorded :
Being human is an inevitably vulnerable experience. The challenge lies in being taught that there is something wrong with us for feeling as sensitive and vulnerable as we do, We learn to cover up or numb out our sensitivity.Practice teaches us to turn towards, rather than away, from vulnerability, and allow it to affirm the…