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

Search Sangha Live

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

  • Justine Dawson

    The Appropriate Response

    Recorded : May 8, 2022

    When a monk asked the 10th Century Zen master Yunmen, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?” Yunmen replied, “An appropriate response.”  What is this appropriate response and how do we know we’ve got it right? Beyond linear formulas, Dharma teachings point to a natural intelligence that guides us in a spontaneous responsiveness to life….

    Read More

  •

    What is the Ultimate Truth?

    Recorded : June 5, 2022

    The world of mind-body, mindfulness, meditation and well-being maximises priority on conventional or relative truth. This requires wise attention and change relative to our experience. We are familiar with taking up views, remaining neutral with views or holding onto views. We might call these views relative or absolute. Can we discover (ultimate) truth not bound…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Saddha: Unshakeable Confidence

    Recorded : January 8, 2023

    So many of us feel assailed by doubt, anxiety and insecurity. Unhelpful self-talk, along with the uncertainties of the world, heighten and reinforce thought tendencies. Dharma practice helps us recognize and uproot ingrained patterns, and also to establish trust, confidence and fearlessness. Our first Sunday Sangha of 2023 will inquire into what is deeply trustworthy, and point towards a confidence that is unshakeable — regardless of circumstance or preference, life or death.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of April 6

    We’re fortunate that Martin Aywlard has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK. To find out more about Martin, and to view his other contributions to Sangha Live, click here. View the text for the daily chants Martin offers this week Monday, April 6 Wednesday, April 8 Demands, defences…

    Read More

  • Leslie Booker

    The Delusion of Separateness

    Recorded : October 27, 2019

    There seems to be a sense of disorientation, disjointedness and overall running around in circles happening in the world today. And for some reason, many of us think that we’re the only ones who are feeling it; as if it’s our own personal failing. As we move into the changing of seasons, this is the…

    Read More

  •

    Clear Presence, Sweet Absence

    Recorded : March 1, 2020

    Dharma practice encourages us to see the present moment clearly – to meet and respond to it well. What is here in this moment? Another dimension of practice is to learn to appreciate absence: What is this moment free from? Having skill in both these dimensions brings us closer to the joy and peace that…

    Read More

  • Ralph Steele

    What Am I Doing In Here

    Recorded : April 3, 2022

    The practice of Mindfulness from breath to breath is essential.  If you have knowledge of the Four Noble Truths then you have the foundation; only practice is needed to gain insight into the Dharma.  As we go through our daily activities, working with the masculine and feminine elements within us, it takes the Right View…

    Read More