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

Dharma, Sex, Intimacy and Covid

With Martin Aylward recorded on September 6, 2020.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

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 intimacy, offering resources for how we can best take care of our bodies, minds, hearts and of each other during these times.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Is there compassion for the self? Go deep. Is compassion the end of self?

    The Dharma flies with two wings – compassion and wisdom. Compassion emerges from a liberated wisdom. That happens when constructs in the mind lose their significance. The emptiness of self and the emptiness of dependency on feeling tones take priority. This talk also explores the contraction of compassion into self interest. The liberation of compassion…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of March 14, 2022

    This week’s theme is: Gathering in the Goodness. ‘Drop by drop the pot of goodness is filled.’ -Buddha. Gathering in community we become more than the sum of our parts. We are each supported by, and supporting others — meditating alone is far less easy. Just so, in each moment of mindfulness we gather body-heart-mind from distraction into presence and open possibilities for greater and greater well-being; not just for ourselves, but for all beings.

    Read More

  • Wes Nisker

    How to be an Earthling

    During this session we will use mindfulness meditation to explore our nature as nature, helping us to become more at ease and accepting of our lives and our place in the scheme of things.

    Read More

  • The ‘Self’ is Insubstantial

    Humans live in the spell of the self, as if it had substantial existence.
    Dharma offers a reflection/meditation/inquiry into this phenomenon.
    One who asks ‘Who Wakes Up?’ lives in the spell.
    Teaching will offer ways to a non-intellectual realisation of emptiness of self.
    Be devoted to this in daily life – until obvious as seeing colour for one with sound eyesight.
    To wake up from the dream of self is liberating.

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of 09 June, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Zohar Lavie guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Steadiness, Clarity and Care in Challenging Times

    During this week of practice, we will explore and practice the boundless qualities of compassion and equanimity. Compassion as the heart’s capacity to open and attend to suffering, and equanimity as the heart’s ability to face life in all its aspects with clarity and steadiness.
    These two beautiful qualities complement and nourish each other. They support us to meet experience and act within it in beneficial ways, even in difficult times.

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

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    On Teachings and Teachers

    People often ask about the importance (or not) of working closely with a teacher. One can benefit greatly from general meditation instruction, but personalised guidance from someone who knows you and your practice well can be deeply helpful. In this session, Martin speaks about approaching teachers for guidance and about the dynamics of the teacher-student…

    Read More

  • Time and Timelessness: Finding Refuge, Finding Inspiration

    Certain moments, events and experiences open our awareness beyond the everyday to a sense of something more eternally present. Meditation points our attention to just this place, which the poet TS Eliot called ‘the point of intersection of the timeless with time’. Contemplating life from such a perspective we can often find fresh resources of…

    Read More