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

  • Refuge, resilience and response in uncertain times

    By now, we can consciously acknowledge that our planetary state of emergency and ineffectual political response is impacting and fast changing our Dharma curriculum. We are being mercilessly shaken awake while at the same time facing overwhelming uncertainties. In this session, Thanissara explores how the Dharma, its practices and guidelines, can come to our aid…

    Read More

  • Stephen Fulder

    Is Samsara Fixable?

    We are going through difficult and uncertain times and we long for relief. There is much we can do to help ourselves and our community. Yet this can also include accessing a more transcendent perspective, in which we take the pains of samsara less personally. Nondual dharma invites us to see life as perfect just…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Staying In, Going Inwards: Inner Resources for Indoor Life

    Martin, the founding and guiding teacher of Sangha Live, leads our regular Sunday session, looking at skilful ways to meet this time of confinement and ‘forced retreat’. He offers various reflections on caring for ourselves and others, and makes plenty of time to share and explore together as a Sangha, as we lean into this…

    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 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

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Leaning Into Collapse

    The fires and floods of this summer, and the ongoing pandemic and its complexities, can weigh heavy on the heart, along with the shocking but unsurprising new IPCC report confirming the ‘inevitable and irreversible’ worsening effects of the climate disruption, ecological collapse and existential emergency we are already living through. This class, led by Sangha…

    Read More

  • The Happiness of Emptiness

    Exploration of ultimate teachings requires listening, reflection/meditation rather than sitting to wait for an experience. Emptiness does not require experiences. The ultimate reveals the emptiness of self, ego, I and my – including self interest, self help and self compassion. This session will explore the contractions forming self and the way our minds have become…

    Read More