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

Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of January 15, 2024

Ulla Koenig

We’re fortunate that Ulla Koenig has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK. To find out more about Ulla, 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 theme is Tending to Fire – An Exploration of the Third Noble Truth

 

The third of the four noble truths, which the Buddha offered as a framework, invites us to reflect on ways to tend to the inner fires or urges, which we all experience. ‘Nirodha’ is a concept which invites us to explore ways to handle that fire: to contain it, to create safe space around it and not to fuel it further, so that it eventually expires. This week, we explore concepts like ‘freedom of/from/to’ as well as letting go and letting be.

Aware of the Fire

January 15, 2024

Taking Refuge in Awareness

January 16, 2024

Needs, Wishes and Desires

January 17, 2024

Ulla’s translation of the 3rd noble truth: “There is a noble truth concerning the cessation of suffering. It is the complete fading away and cessation of this craving; its abandonment and relinquishment; getting free from and being independent of it.”

The above quote is taken from here: https://suttacentral.net/

Freedom to Respond

January 18, 2024

The Myth of Letting Go

January 19, 2024

Ulla talked about ways to limit clinging and craving and brought seven ways the Buddha mentioned in MN 2:

  • Pay attention to what you pay attention to – what might I pay attention to, which is more likely to create craving
  • Protecting the sense doors
  • Reflect what we really need
  • Practice resilience with unpleasant experience
  • Avoid experience which might unbalance the heart-mind
  • Willpower: Consciously decide what you do not want to engage with
  • Develop supportive qualities which nourish and stabilize the heart-mind

(From MN 2 – https://suttacentral.net/mn2/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin)

 

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Blunt Suffering

    Let’s not flinch when we look at the lived experiences of illness, confusion, and relational pain. Let’s allow the texture of hurt to be known. Awareness remains brilliant, for sure. Any of us can experience this. Maybe the more we allow the blunt pain of the body-mind, the more we can sit squarely in awareness….

    Read More

  • Lisa Ernst

    Skillful Ways to Work with Difficult Thoughts in Meditation

    There’s a misconception that thoughts are a hindrance to deep meditation and tranquility. Especially during this ongoing challenging time, certain thoughts may be persistent and difficult to release. Yet, thoughts themselves are not the problem; it’s our relationship to them that determines whether or not they impede our meditation. In this session, we will explore a number of skillful ways to work with difficult or persistent thoughts in meditation to support inner well-being and clarity.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Love for the world

    In our last class of 2017, our guiding teacher Martin offers reflections on life, love and liberation, looking particularly at some of the challenging events and elements of worldly life, and pointing towards a skilful, loving and courageous engagement with the world and everyone in it.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Jaya Rudgard – Week of 25 May, 2026

    This week’s theme is: Staying Steady in the Flow – Supports for Everyday Practice

    This week will consider different ways we can stay connected with and resourced by our practice in the midst of the ups and downs and unpredictability of everyday life.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Resting in Receptivity – Opening Up to What Liberates

    This session is an embodied, compassionate exploration through our body-mind-heart into life. The door is open. What we long for is already there. This practise invites you to undo and deeply rest into the wonder of an receptive presence. BY LAL DED, TRANSLATED BY JANE HIRSHFIELD:I was passionate,filled with longing,I searchedfar and wide. But the…

    Read More

  • The Radical Heart

    It’s hard to find the words that do justice to the enormity of the heartbreak we are in. As we wake up to our new reality, we feel grief, fear, outrage, and a daily kaleidoscope of reactions as we witness the dying of our beautiful planet. Our Dharma practice is for this, to meet reality….

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of 12 January, 2026

    This week’s theme is: In Service of a Boundless Heart:

    An exploration of the rich breadth of the teachings and their capacity to transform our experience into something beautiful and liberating. As we include more aspects of our lives in our practice and emphasise interconnection, ethics, compassion and wisdom, a precious process unfolds; a process of unbinding the heart and expanding it to be as wide as the world.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More