Eros is life force, the energy that animates our being. Eros fills our spiritual life with vitality, our minds with creativity, our ideas with embodiment and our relating with rich intimacy. To live full lives we need access to eros; without it we become dry, rigid, flacid and withholding. Yet what place does it have in dharma practice? Traditional teachings caution us when it comes to desire, and the erotic is rarely mentioned in a positive light. This Sunday we’ll explore how to engage eros and desire in a deepening practice of insight and understanding, one that is rooted in the body and in service to life.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of May 10, 2021
This week’s theme is: Invitation to Awaken.
The Buddha adopted a medical model to express the seminal and accessible four noble truths. We can see a diagnosis, a cause and symptoms, a cure, and a treatment. Namely dukkha (stress), taṇhā (thirsting), nibanna (freedom), and the noble eightfold path of release. This can be taken as a simple direction of how to understand and treat the human condition. It’s also an invitation into the depths and intricacies of the dharma.
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Choices – The Ones that Matter and the Ones that Don’t
Recorded :
July 28, 2019 How many choices will you make today? Which ones are likely to lead to happiness and which to suffering? Often we have many more options than we think we do. The Buddha’s teachings offer clear guidance on how to make choices that help us develop our habits, our character, and our karma in a way…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of May 8, 2023
This week’s theme is “Shedding Light on Darkness”. In the Buddhist tradition, we find three psycho-physical dynamics which bring together suffering, stress and dissatisfaction. Beside aggression and wanting, the root of moha, often translated as ignorance, delusion or blindness, can be tricky to understand and practice. What are we blind to? What do we need to see and understand? How can we potentially see our blind spots? How can we prepare ourselves for that which we might discover? We dedicate this week of practice to discovering the different aspects of ignorance and learn practical steps to look deeply yet with kind eyes.
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Pride Every Day of Our Lives
Recorded :
July 24, 2022 Pride celebrations are dedicated to celebrating the freedoms we have as LGBTQIA2S+ people and for campaigning for the human rights of Queer and Trans people around the world. 50 years ago the Gay Liberation Front held their first march in London. I was a kid, when history was being made. History is still being made…
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Coming Home To The Body with Breath
Recorded :
December 9, 2018 The teachings of the dharma originate from meditation, sitting in zazen, in samadhi. Everything we need to know is in the depths of our being, but we must first come home. One breath at a time, until it is safe for us to turn all feelings back on, and be at home in the body….
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Angulimala: an ethical transformation
Recorded :
December 10, 2017 Shaila tells the life story of Angulimala and his transformation from notorious robber and murderer to a peaceful, compassionate, truthful, and awakened monk. It is an inspiring example of the power of restraint, and the potential for redemption. Habits and dispositions do not need to control our lives. We can stop unwholesome, unhealthy, and harmful…
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Methodology, Ideology and Cosmology: Three Dimensions of a Full Spectrum Practice
Recorded :
October 11, 2020 Dharma practice is sometimes seen too reductively through a uniquely meditative lens. This class looks not only at what you practice (methodology) but also at why you practice (ideology) and at your understanding of the nature of reality; the way you make sense of the universe, of time and space, self and world, life and…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of April 5, 2021
We’re fortunate that Martin Aylward has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK this week. To find out more about Martin, and view his other recordings on the platform, click here.
