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

Embracing Ambiguity: In What we Believe, How we Love and Who we Think we Are

With Martin Aylward recorded on July 7, 2019.

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

“Things are not as they seem, and nor are they otherwise” – Lankavatara Sutra.

We easily get seduced by certainty – thinking we really know what we want, what we believe, and who we think we are.

Yet Dharma teachings invite us to hold experience lightly, without reducing our knowing to narrow certainty; retaining a genuinely open mind. Today’s session with Worldwide Insight Founding teacher Martin Aylward will explore how dharma practice can help us stay with this sacred ’not-knowing’. Martin will discuss how we can be both looser and freer in relating to self, other and world, and how a nuanced and flexible mind helps navigate a world where the seeming certainties of ‘right and wrong’ easily divide us from each other.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Soothing Anxiety

    Anxiety is a completely normal, natural human emotion. Anxiety can be rooted in circumstances related to one’s personal life, relationships, or larger issues affecting our society and planet. Regardless of the source, many suffer from intense, frequent or chronic forms of anxiety. What does spirituality and contemplative practice have to teach us about how to…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of June 29

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, June 29 In truth, you are never lost Wednesday, July 1 Integrating practice into everyday life Friday, July 3 Resting…

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    The Choice is Ours: Wise Relationship to Our Experience

    These pandemic times with isolation, suffering, social and political divisiveness and an uncertain future our lives are filled with even more challenges than usual. At the same time many hearts are opening with increased compassion, connection and possibilities on the horizon. The mind can easily get contracted by the stress or grasping at hope. But…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings with Christopher Titmuss- Week of June 10, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Letting Go. An Act of the Will?”

    We pick up a hot coal in the morning from the wood burner.

    Ouch, we let go immediately. No thought. No desire. Instant letting go.

    The language of letting go has entered into the mind of the meditator.

    It is often not a solution but an ambitious state of mind.

    Letting go reveals an outcome of understanding.

    We can tell ourselves a 1000 times we should let go and it’s to no avail.

    The desire to let go shows we are not ready to let go.

    We will explore the preparation for letting go and wise responses employing at times letting go.

    Read More

  • Nourishing Compassion

    His Holiness the Dalai Lama has shared that compassion is not a luxury but a necessity for human beings to survive. There is no more important time to understand and strengthen compassion than right now.

    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

  • Lisa Ernst

    Working with Stress and Fear

    Not all stress is bad. Yet without mindful awareness, anticipatory stress may spiral into reactivity, paralyzing fear and suffering. How do we meet this stress mindfully, use it skilfully, then let go?

    Read More