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

  • The Nonduality of Good and Evil? Buddhist Reflections on War

    Ukraine…Gaza…Iran… Can Buddhist teachings help us understand and respond to these modern conflicts? Quotation: If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil…

    Read More

  • The ‘Self’ is Insubstantial

    Humans live in the spell of the self, as if it had substantial existence.
    Dharma offers a reflection/meditation/inquiry into this phenomenon.
    One who asks ‘Who Wakes Up?’ lives in the spell.
    Teaching will offer ways to a non-intellectual realisation of emptiness of self.
    Be devoted to this in daily life – until obvious as seeing colour for one with sound eyesight.
    To wake up from the dream of self is liberating.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Leela Sarti – Week of April 26, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Timeless presence in the midst of daily life.

    This week we will invite the possibility of being grounded in the depth of timeless presence in the midst of daily life. We will practice and inquire how to live a full and heartfelt life from silence and emptiness, and yet being yourself in peace with others, and doing what needs to be done.

    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

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of October 4, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Meeting the Bodily Companion

    Mindfulness of the body is a key aspect of practice. When we’re in contact with our bodies, we root ourselves in the present moment and find refuge from obsessive thinking. These sessions serve a renewal of our relationship with our lifelong companion: the body. Movement, breathing, skilfully applied imagination, etc. will provide creative ways to deepen an embodied way of life. Everybody will be able to join in these gentle but powerful practices. Make sure you have enough space to comfortably stretch your arms to all sides and consider practicing standing or lying down during these sessions, depending on your level of energy.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of Oct 17, 2022

    This week’s topic is “A Peaceful Mind”. Thoughts are our continuous companions. While some are harmless, others have a deep impact on us: not only do they shape perceptions, but they also influence our physical and mental well-being. In our darkest hours, we might feel the pain of negative, depressing or restless thought patterns. Shaken by their invasive nature, we often wish for a rest from the never-ending chatter. We dedicate the upcoming week to an exploration into the realm of thoughts and skilful practice.

    Read More

  • How to Find Balance in Difficult Times

    Equanimity is balance that comes from wisdom; it’s our heart and mind’s capacity to roll with the inevitable challenges and changes of life without taking it personally, without falling into despair or hopeless. Rather than a bland state of neutrality, or a cold state of indifference, equanimity gives us a wide space to feel the…

    Read More