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

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    The Four Sights

    Recorded : December 21, 2025

    What truly inspires us to change our lives? Are aging, sickness, and death enough to make us turn things around? Today, we’ll explore the inspiration that drove the Prince on his journey, and ask whether it holds the same power for us. (Please note that unfortunately the guided meditation and start of the dharma talk…

    Read More

  • Chris Germer

    The Power of Self-Compassion

    Recorded : June 11, 2023

    Most people are more compassionate toward others than themselves when things go wrong. However, burgeoning research shows that self-compassion is good for everybody. Fortunately, it can be learned.  How can we seamlessly bring self-compassion into meditation practice and daily life?  What are two secrets about self-compassion practice that make all the difference?

    Read More

  • Lama Rod Owens

    The Dharma of Homecoming in Times of Fear

    Recorded : July 26, 2020

    Maya Angelou once wrote: “The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” James Baldwin reflected: “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” In The Wiz, Stephanie Mills sang: “When I think of home I think of…

    Read More

  • Ven. Pannavati Bikkhuni

    All Worldly Dharma is Buddha Dharma

    Recorded : July 30, 2023

    Nowadays, many Buddhist practitioners have mistaken views. Taking the false to be true, we can make some progress, but not much. Only in the light of wisdom can we awaken to the truth because it allows us to penetrate avidya — the karmic hindrance of non-understanding that is complicating our lives. Join us for a discussion…

    Read More

  • Leslie Booker

    Practicing Belonging in a Divisive World

    Recorded : October 20, 2024

    The precepts are often shared on the first night of retreat to kind of go into a social contract of how we’re going to care for one another on retreat, while holding the nobility of silence. And out in the world, without the protection of silence and this commitment, we often forget how deeply we…

    Read More