Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Nov 1, 2021

Nirmala Werner

Nirmala Werner

We’re fortunate that Nirmala Werner has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK. To find out more about Nirmala, and to view her other contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Recordings are posted 24 – 36 hours after the live session runs.

 

This week’s topic is Embodied Metta – The Body as a Pathway to Freedom.

 

The Buddha’s teachings invite us to be with things as they are. This week, we’ll learn embodiment practices to help us cultivate true love, compassion and care for ourselves and for others. We’ll practice staying intimate with our body, mind and heart in daily life, in sexuality, and with (often unwanted) thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Coming home to our body

November 1, 2021

Links to poems:

Mary Oliver – Wild Geese

Hafiz – If God Invited You to a Party 

Appreciation of the body

November 2, 2021

Links and quotes:

Quote from Rumi: “I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you into my heart. I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had and lift you like a prayer to the sky.”

Hafiz: Why Abstain from Love? Available in this collection of poems

Meeting difficult emotions with body, breath and voice

November 3, 2021

Links

A gentle embrace of sexuality

November 4, 2021

Links and quotes:

Galway Kinnell: Saint Francis and the Sow

Quote from Sri Ramakrishna: Oh longing mind, dwell within the depth of your own pure nature, do not seek your home elsewhere…your naked awareness alone, o mind, is the inexhaustible abundance for which you long so desperately. 

Heart connection and reaching out

November 5, 2021

Links:

Antonio Machado: Last Night As I Was Sleeping

 

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Tuere Sala

    The Supramundane Nature of Emptiness

    Emptiness can be a loaded word for lay practitioners. It can bring up a sense of isolation and annihilation. The dharma of emptiness, however, is a fundamental part of practice. Even in the most mundane tasks of our ordinary lives, we can access emptiness and feel the freedom that comes with it. It’s not about…

    Read More

  • Befriending the emotions.

    So often we struggle because we’re resisting, fixing, changing, or even “transcending” our experiences. What shifts when instead of pushing our emotions away, we invite them closer in? What changes when we learn to relate to our emotions like a welcoming friend? And, what changes when we are able to access the place in which…

    Read More

  • Wise Resolve: Finding Inner Strength

    In an effort to counter tendencies towards striving and over-achieving, many Western approaches to meditation and spirituality emphasize relaxation. While relaxation and ease are essential ingredients on the meditative path, they must be integrated with whole-hearted effort. How do we find inner strength and make a clear resolve that is informed by wisdom and balanced…

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    Insight and practices for difficult times

    We are in a race between fear and consciousness. Never before have forces of greed hatred and ignorance enjoyed such a platform of populist divisiveness that instills fear and separation throughout society, endangering our very civilization. And never before has there been as much caring and worldwide commitment to making this a better world. In…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Leela Sarti – Week of April 26, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Timeless presence in the midst of daily life.

    This week we will invite the possibility of being grounded in the depth of timeless presence in the midst of daily life. We will practice and inquire how to live a full and heartfelt life from silence and emptiness, and yet being yourself in peace with others, and doing what needs to be done.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Catherine McGee – Week of April 25, 2022

    This week’s theme is “Exploring and Developing the Power of a Light Touch”. A light touch can allow our practice to unfold more easefully, make the depths of our hearts more available and create a greater agility in our relationships with the world. With our body as the primary ground for our practice we will explore different ways to cultivate this kind of attention, enjoy the fruits of our efforts and attend to what might hinder this natural capacity

    Read More

  • The Practice of Blamelessness

    We are deeply conditioned to blame; it’s a survival strategy. Though it can feel necessary, maybe even fruitful to part of us, blaming arises out of suffering, and leads to more suffering. The process of blame is not required but we don’t always know how to put it down. How do we let it go?

    Read More

  • Shaila Catherine

    How Conduct Bears Fruit: Training in Not-Killing

    In this session Shaila Catherine explores the fruits of karma and the consequences of action through a detailed consideration of why and how we practice ethical precepts. The focus for this talk is the commitment to not kill.

    Read More