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 will be posted by the end of the day of the live session.
Recorded :
Finding a comfortable body posture when meditating is a crucial element in our practice. We can use our bodies as a way of experiencing change and impermanence. In this session, we will be looking at ways to make our bodies comfortable for meditation – both standing (if appropriate for your body) and sitting. We will examine various postures and do various techniques that can be helpful for meditating.
This week’s theme is: Release First. If Not, Then Explore Renewal.
Release means liberation, such as person released from prison. Confinement to problemetic history has finally come to an end. Our being knows a full engagement with life. With release, renewal comes naturally, such as entering deep sleep and waking up with renewed energy. Practice includes exploration of renewal while a transcendent view gives primary interest to release.
Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.
This week’s theme is “Preparing the Heart and Mind”. In Buddhist practice we often hear we should let go. And often enough we would really like to let go of those thoughts, impulses, moods and contractions which keep us agitated and in unease. But letting go is rarely something we decide to do; and neither is holding on. In the upcoming week we will explore why the heart-mind holds on to something and how we can prepare, nourish and soothe it, so that letting go becomes a natural process, not a willful command.
This week’s theme is Making Sense of Self.
Although the Buddha encourages us to not indulgently ponder whether the self is real or not, he did offer us a way to explore how the sense of self appears. This methodology, called the khandhas (aggregates: the heap of heaps), exposes all aspects we gather together to create and hold to our sense of self: form (body); vedanā (subtle preference); perception; saṅkhāra (mental formations – like intention, attention…); and consciousness (knowing).
Recorded :
Many long for a way to “integrate” their Buddhist practice with what is often called “the rest of my life.” This often fails. Doesn’t integration refer to separate things that must be brought together? In this talk, Gregory offers what he calls the Five Tenets of a Whole Life Path, a practical, yet demanding, way…
Recorded :
Everything we do in life depends on energy, but the modern world has a destructive and exploitative relationship with energy. What is wise, balanced energy in spiritual practice? How can we establish this in the face of societal pressure and norms, and how can it be a resource in our daily life?
Recorded :
What do you love? What’s your relationship to love? Do you love yourself? Do you love someone else? Do you love your job or your hobbies or your house or your friends or your community? Do you love the dharma or the truth or reality? What is Love? Beyond learning about what we love, what…
Recorded :
Vince writes: “I am continuously inspired by some of the images that the Buddha offers us of ‘Sati’ or ‘Mindfulness’. This talk for Worldwide Insight is an exploration of some the many aspects of mindfulness – or in my case a lack of mindfulness – that continue to play themselves out in my life. In…