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

Don’t be realistic. Be real

With Martin Aylward recorded on March 18, 2018.

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

Through the cultures within family, education and work, we are constantly orientated towards ‘realistic’ expectations and visions for our lives. Dharma practice asks us to abandon the realistic in favour of the real; listening deeply to life and to how things actually are, so as to respond wisely and lovingly, fully and freely. In this class Worldwide Insight founding teacher Martin Aylward contrasts the realistic and the real, inviting reflection and discussion to point us towards freedom, awakening and wise engagement with the world.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Shaila Catherine

    Appreciation and joy

    We can cultivate the attitude of appreciation and allow it to enhance and strengthen our mindfulness practice. Shaila Catherine speaks about the powerful impact that joy and appreciation can have on the quality of our minds, and the development of our spiritual path.

    Read More

  • Martine Batchelor

    What is this?

    In this session Martine leads a guided meditation on the question “What is this?”, and then explores this questioning practice as a means to encounter each moment with awareness and as a means of developing a stable and open heart.

    Read More

  • Cultivating Wise Energy

    Everything we do in life depends on energy, but the modern world has a destructive and exploitative relationship with energy. What is wise, balanced energy in spiritual practice? How can we establish this in the face of societal pressure and norms, and how can it be a resource in our daily life?

    Read More

  • Kate Johnson

    Radical Friendship – Practicing Freedom in Unfree Places

    In these times of isolation and uprising, how can wise relationships be a refuge? Join us for an exploration of the Buddha’s teachings on spiritual friendship, and how they can help us embody freedom in all our relationships as we navigate the path to collective liberation.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of 03 February, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Ayala Gill leading our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they bring depth and joy to your practice.

    This week’s theme is: From Suffering To Love

    Suffering is a messenger inviting us to include more of this moment with love. Rather than fussing, numbing and fixing, we pause in the midst of reactivity to breathe, come into the body, unhook from stories and feel emotions with love. This allows us to respond to life from love. Suffering returns us to love by showing us what we leave out of its limitless embrace.

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

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of October 18, 2021

    This week’s theme is: The Abundant Middle-Way.

    The Buddha in his last steps of awakening turned away from austerities and the practiced hardships he had endured. He did not turn back to the indulgences of his youth, but uncovered a kind and sensitive middle-way between a sense of self-importance and self-negation. The awakened one then invited others to a way of living between common extremes of views, states, and habitual actions.

    This week we will walk the path of peace supporting the deep well-being and boundless heart of the middle-way.

    Read More