Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of January 18, 2021
Martin Aylward
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.
Relaxing around experience
January 18, 2021
The mind is deep
January 19, 2021
"Good" and "bad" meditations (or, Meditation is a process)
Our heart’s experiences do not only affect our mental and emotional states. They also impact bodily experience, creating tension, tightness, spaciousness or ease. Likewise, our bodily experiences do not only generate physical sensations, but also inform and determine the energies of our heart. In this Sunday Sangha session, we will use qigong and meditation to…
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, April 27 Resting in your own being Wednesday, April 29 Freeing the habit of separation Friday, May 1 Settling into…
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,…
We live our lives through stories – about the world, and about ourselves. You may have noticed these stories surfacing in awareness in your meditation practice. We often cling to these stories as being “true”, yet holding this wrong view conceals that these stories are impermanent, cause suffering, and ultimately, are not personal. In this…
We are deeply habituated to seek equanimity as if it’s a state to be found. In times of crisis, stakes are high. We try harder. The more desperate we feel, the more effort we put in. In this striving, we forget to ask: “Who is it that’s striving?” This question isn’t about finding the right…
This week’s topic is Subtilising Experience. The Dharma is a path to awakening. Our experience becomes more liberated as we awaken. Similarly, we can notice that our life progresses from the gross to the more subtle in awakening. A path of awakening freedom, then, is a path of subtilising: from perceptions of self and things in the world to space-time and even awareness, all phenomena transition from rigid and gross to fluid and refined, all the way to barely here at all.
When a monk asked the 10th Century Zen master Yunmen, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?” Yunmen replied, “An appropriate response.” What is this appropriate response and how do we know we’ve got it right? Beyond linear formulas, Dharma teachings point to a natural intelligence that guides us in a spontaneous responsiveness to life….
Is it possible to live and love freely amidst the greed, aggression and dysfunction of the world?Amidst so much suffering, can you nourish joy, lightness and laughter?When it feels as if you’re drowning, might it be that you are floating in an ocean of blessings?In times of political polarisation and dysfunction, broken societal modelling, a…