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

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Dharma, Sex, Intimacy and Covid

    We are more physically isolated during these days of Covid. Less physical contact, less access even to each others smiles beneath the masks we wear to care for each others’ health. Contact and intimacy are deeply important to humans, and in this session Sangha Live founding and guiding teacher Martin Aylward explores different forms of…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of Oct 17, 2022

    This week’s topic is “A Peaceful Mind”. Thoughts are our continuous companions. While some are harmless, others have a deep impact on us: not only do they shape perceptions, but they also influence our physical and mental well-being. In our darkest hours, we might feel the pain of negative, depressing or restless thought patterns. Shaken by their invasive nature, we often wish for a rest from the never-ending chatter. We dedicate the upcoming week to an exploration into the realm of thoughts and skilful practice.

    Read More

  • Trudy Goodman

    Breathe! Delight in Meditation

    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…

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 22 September, 2025

    We’re grateful to have Nirmala Werner guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Still Heart: Cultivating Equanimity in an Unsteady World

    In a world marked by constant change, uncertainty, and emotional intensity, equanimity can seem like a distant ideal-or even a form of indifference. But in the Buddhist tradition, equanimity (upekkhā) is not cold or passive. It is the spacious, steady heart that knows how to stay open, grounded, and present with whatever life brings.

    In this week we will explore equanimity as a deep source of inner freedom-neither detached nor reactive, but wise, loving, and awake.

    Through daily reflection and embodied practice, we will ask:

    What is true equanimity, and what is it not?

    How can we meet change without losing our ground?

    How do we love and let go-at the same time?

    And how can we live with a still heart in a restless world?

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

    Read More

  • Climate Code Red

    However challenging, we are in these times because we need to be here. We are here to release from what no longer serves and to infuse a new story with clear, wise, conscious intention; a story about building our collective resilience as we rise, with compassion, to save what we can.

    Read More