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

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of 16 December, 2024

    We’re delighted to have Martin Aylward guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they bring peace and depth to your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Peace and Love!

    Our last week of daily meditation for 2024, led by Martin and exploring nuances of the spiritual heart, in our own lives and as we navigate the complexities of the world.

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

    Read More

  • Nothing is reliable outside liberation.

    Practice places emphasis on seeing impermanence. Such a practice easily becomes habitual to the degree we miss the point. There is nothing reliable owing to impermanence. There is nothing we can depend upon in this world of mentality and materiality, inner and outer. If we abide deeply clear about this, the stress and fears fade…

    Read More

  • Ronya Banks

    Embracing Uncertainty – Practice During Crisis

    “The truth is that you will never be absolutely safe. All things change constantly, even what is most precious. This is the angst of life, the price of being a conscious human being.” – Phillip Moffitt As a spiritual practitioner, you learn to see and accept “uncertainty” as a fact of life – even during…

    Read More

  • The Surgeon’s Probe: Healing with Mindfulness

    Vince writes: “I am continuously inspired by some of the images that the Buddha offers us of ‘Sati’ or ‘Mindfulness’. This talk for Worldwide Insight is an exploration of some the many aspects of mindfulness – or in my case a lack of mindfulness – that continue to play themselves out in my life. In…

    Read More

  • Nicola Redfern

    Not Knowing is Most Intimate

    The Buddha spoke often about the danger of clinging to views and opinions. He recommended we avoid clinging, even to the dharma and to “right view.” In a world increasingly torn apart by our adherence to differing viewpoints, how do we navigate the tension between knowing and not knowing? Our exploration will draw from the…

    Read More

  • Asking Better Questions

    In this session author and communication trainer Oren Jay Sofer offered guidance and reflections on how to approach difficult situations like stress from the pandemic and conflict with family with more skill, clarity and compassion. (Please note that this live stream experienced some technical difficulties, so the recording has been edited accordingly.)

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of Nov 15, 2022

    This week’s topic is Kindle the Flame. Metta practice, which nourishes the heart’s capacity for friendliness, brings many benefits. It softens our relationship to ourselves, nourishes us with a sense of connection, puts challenges into perspective and offers a safe ground from which we can meet life with a sense of care. We dedicate this week to (re)ignite the flame of metta, using as an inspiration the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta, a famous discourses of the Buddha.

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    Attitude to practice.

    Worldwide Insight talk from James Baraz: “Attitude to Practice”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.

    Read More