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 the live session runs.
This week’s theme is: Identifying the Many Masks of the Inner Critic
Often we think of the inner critic as the constant nagging inner discourse which dismisses our good qualities, questions our lovability, and our potential for goodness. Being a master/mistress of disguise, the inner critic takes on many forms; it wraps our decision making process in veils of doubt, pushes us into compulsive activity, traps us in paralysis, and distorts our views on others.
Luckily, the Dharma path offers us tools to meet this painful heart-mind dynamic. This week we will practice summoning qualities like wisdom, kindness, equanimity, concentration, appreciation, compassion and inquiry, in order to meet our inner critic in a skilful way.
Recorded :
The world of mind-body, mindfulness, meditation and well-being maximises priority on conventional or relative truth. This requires wise attention and change relative to our experience. We are familiar with taking up views, remaining neutral with views or holding onto views. We might call these views relative or absolute. Can we discover (ultimate) truth not bound…
This week’s theme is: The Power of Compassion.
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. – Dalai Lama
During this week we will explore how compassion informs and supports meditation practice and the deepening of understanding and wisdom. We will practice and inquire into different aspects of this powerful attitude and intention and taste for ourselves the impact it has on ourselves and the world.
Recorded :
Buddha-Dharma teachings offer unparalleled insight into Truth, both ultimate and relative. Yet many practitioners fall into the belief that regular meditation alone will lead to breakthrough experiences and liberation-reinforced by the image of Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree.True liberation requires more than mindfulness practice. It transforms our entire conditioning: our ethics, how we view…
Recorded :
How can we delight in our meditation? Learning to bring loving awareness to the breath, feeling the ebb and flow in real time as we sit quietly, is an art. The key is in our approach. Sometimes in practicing mindfulness of breathing, there can be an over-emphasis or insistence on focusing attention that drives delight…
Recorded :
Dharma teachings importantly emphasise suffering, compassion, renunciation, desire, non-reactivity, peacefulness. All these are potent themes, yet ones which can make our practice feel overly heavy, unnecessarily serious, maybe even uptight! Dharma practice equally points us towards a playful nature, light-heartedness and ease, delight and the capacity to really enjoy life. Especially when we can get…
Recorded :
We can cultivate the attitude of appreciation and allow it to enhance and strengthen our mindfulness practice. Shaila Catherine speaks about the powerful impact that joy and appreciation can have on the quality of our minds, and the development of our spiritual path.
Recorded :
Dharma practice is sometimes seen too reductively through a uniquely meditative lens. This class looks not only at what you practice (methodology) but also at why you practice (ideology) and at your understanding of the nature of reality; the way you make sense of the universe, of time and space, self and world, life and…