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

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 22 June, 2026

    This week’s theme is: The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Happiness in Enoughness . Stepping out of the pressure to keep up, we turn toward the simple joys of presence, gratitude, and generosity. Together we explore how contentment and letting go can open the heart to a more quiet and sustainable happiness. Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Uncertainty, Stability & Love: Everything Comes With Everything

    Life is never only good or only bad, pleasant or unpleasant, comfortable or uncomfortable, just or unjust. Cultivating a wide spacious perspective within the reality of uncertainty gives rise to a bigger capacity to meet our lives more gently, kindly, and clearly, with more stability and more love. Join us as we explore perspectives and practices to…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Shireen Jilla – Week of 29 September, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Shireen Jilla guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May her teachings enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Equanimity: Balancing at the Centre of the Seesaw of Life

    Every morning we will explore a different aspect of equanimity, this inner steadiness, and how we nurture it in our practice. What is this felt sense of spacious ease and how is it a wise check to overwhelming compassion? Actively engaging with our experience, how do we deeply let go? And finally, potently, we will explore equanimity as the gift of grace.

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

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Warrior heart: transforming anger into strength, dynamism and creativity

    Dharma teachings point to how dangerous and destructive anger is, and how words and actions can cause great suffering. This class looks at skilful means for meeting and exploring anger, and for understanding and transforming it. Martin leads a specially oriented meditation, and his talk explores the inner strength and confidence which can arise from…

    Read More

  • Lisa Ernst

    The Gap and The Second Noble Truth

    There’s a moment before craving takes hold – a gap. In that space, we gradually cultivate choice in how to respond. This talk explores the Second Noble Truth: how reaching and pushing away pulls us from the present, and how the practice of recognizing the gap – whether a split second or something larger –…

    Read More

  • Akincano M. Weber

    Touching the Earth: Turning the Mind to the Roots

    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.

    Read More