Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Apr 29 – 3 May, 2024
Nirmala Werner
We’re fortunate that Nirmala Werner has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions. To find out more about Nirmala, and to view her other contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Recordings will be posted by the end of the day of the live session.
This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection“.
We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family?
Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing.
This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.
We’re delighted to have Sophie Boyer guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they bring peace and depth to your practice.
This week’s theme is: The Fruits of Attention
What difference does a simple reorientation of attention do to this moment? How will it condition what comes next? Every day this week there will be an opportunity for the fruits of attention to be revealed such as care, generosity, and morality. Let’s explore this together.
Buddhadharma is a system of profound wisdom that helps us to tell the truth about our lives. It helps us to consume the chaos of the world we are struggling through by reminding us of the spaciousness that is always inherently present in and around anything we experience as suffering. When we connect to this…
Is it okay to be angry at times or do we need to get rid of it once and for all?
Meeting our anger can be a challenge, as it comes with a driving energy and tends to evoke reactions of blame, fear or delight within us. The Buddha encouraged us to familiarize ourselves with all expressions of the heart-mind but equally warned about the destructive forces of ill-will. Let us look deeply into the nature of anger and learn ways to channel it in skilful and liberating ways.
Maya Angelou once wrote: “The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” James Baldwin reflected: “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” In The Wiz, Stephanie Mills sang: “When I think of home I think of…
This week’s theme is “Samadhi – Doors of Harmony”. The Buddha encouraged us to nourish, calm, gladden and liberate our heart-mind (citta). To know ways to inner harmony, stillness and contentment independently of outer circumstances is a precious resource. It contributes to resilience, allows steadiness in challenging situations with others and brings confidence into our lives. Yet the path towards samadhi can be easily misunderstood and contribute to more pressure and self-doubt. We dedicate this week to exploring kind and nourishing ways to practice.
A sense of spaciousness is needed for inner change but the person of history obstructs the space that is always there. As our practice deepens space starts to replace self images. The more we are embodied and present, timelessness and space become more experientially available to us. The now starts to stretch and become wide…