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.
Today’s chant:
Countless are living Beings – I vow to row them all to the further shore
Countless are the poisons – I vow to purify them all
Countless are the teachings – I vow to understand them all
Countless are the blessings – I vow to bow my heart to them all
And though the road is endless, I vow to walk it to the very end
Yes though the road is endless, I vow to walk it to the very end
AUM Ah Hung Vajra Guru Pemé Siddhi Hung (x3)
This week’s theme is: Resolve to Unbind the Heart
The word resolve can embody many meanings. This week we will see how much it offers on a Dharma path of awakening. It is made of re & solve: ‘re’ as in ‘really’, fully, with intensity; ’solve’ as in loosen, undo, or dissolve. Such a poetic and insightful combination: to intensely loosen.
The Buddha offered teachings and practices for a path of unbinding. A path of resolve to resolve, of dedication to undoing. For dukkha is a state of high activity and reactivity: a doing of distress. Meditations are practices of skilful and subtle activity that unbuild problematic senses of self and loosen missions of reactivity. An invitation to wake up to life, in life, for life, and there in the midst of it all to resolve: to fully unbind.
This week’s theme is: Season of Goodwill: A Week of Love, Friendship and Steadiness
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Recorded :
The aggregates are a reference to our sense of self. Working with form, feeling, perception, identification, and consciousness as we go through our daily lives will support equanimity. Most importantly, it will help us work with emotions with greater efficiency.
Recorded :
During this session we discuss the teaching on ‘wisely directing one’s attention to the roots’ (yoniso manasikāra). It is a remarkably pragmatic approach to contemplative practice and one of Early Buddhism’s unique contributions to the human emancipatory effort from suffering.
This week’s topic is “Body like a temple”. We often refer to the body as if it were a functional tool. We talk about my body, as if it were supposed to be at our service. Sometimes all it takes is one breath for everything to change, and in a dazzle, we experience body as a temple, a sanctuary for life. What is a temple? It is a sacred place, a place whose spiritual reality goes beyond the physical plane. In our daily meditations this week, we will bow to the miracle of the body that we are, honoring the presence of life unfolding in all its realities.
Daily meditations with Martin Aylward.
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.
Recorded :
In this talk Vidyamala discusses how most of us hold the breath whenever we are in pain or other difficult states. She leads a ‘whole body’ breathing meditation followed by input on how to rest in the flow of the breath as a way to learn to rest in the flow of life and let…