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

Exploring Karma, Choice and the Mind

With Lisa Ernst recorded on June 30, 2024.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

Karma is action in Buddhism, driven by intention. With practice we cultivate the ability to choose our response and our actions, internally and externally. We might think if our intentions are good our actions will follow, but our intentions are often under the influence of strong conditioning that prevents us from living our choices. But with committed practice, we can cultivate greater freedom to live from our truest intentions.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Cabbages & Condoms

    During this session we be explore life’s basic necessities and drives, and the critical difference between ‘getting along’ and ‘getting ahead.’ Our meditation practice will be based on the Wise-Heartedness Bhavana to help us cultivate skilful response to distractions in daily life. A transcript of this session is available here.

    Read More

  • Toby Sola

    The Out Breath: Unlocking Concentration

    Shodo Harada Roshi is known as a “teacher of teachers”, with masters from various lineages coming to sit with him in Japan. If you went to Harada’s monastery, the main meditation technique you’d learn involves slowing the out breath to last one minute. This drastically slows down your physiology, which in turn settles the mind.

    Read More

  • Willa Blythe Baker

    Loving Awareness: Finding Freedom Within

    “This thing person called “me”, the one who is sensing, thinking and perceiving right now….who or what is it? This is an age old question that the traditions of the East, especially Buddhism and Hinduism, have held as the heart of their traditions. The answer to that question, in some scriptures, is “awareness”, a part of us that is already wakeful, attentive, open, free and loving. In this Sunday teaching, we consider what it means to encounter awareness, and why it might be important, not only for our practice of meditation, but for the fulfilment of our life’s purpose.

    Read More

  • George Haas

    Attachment Inquiry and Classical Enlightenment

    Energizing your householder’s meditation practice often requires some immediate benefit be available to you, even if the long goal is enlightenment. Developing a dynamic social network to support your practice is vital to keep on practicing. Finding a meaningful way to be in the world helps create the time, energy and resources necessary to devote…

    Read More

  • Wise Resolve: Finding Inner Strength

    In an effort to counter tendencies towards striving and over-achieving, many Western approaches to meditation and spirituality emphasize relaxation. While relaxation and ease are essential ingredients on the meditative path, they must be integrated with whole-hearted effort. How do we find inner strength and make a clear resolve that is informed by wisdom and balanced…

    Read More

  • Certainty in an uncertain world.

    Consider that your presence on the cushion doesn’t guarantee balance. It’s what you bring to the cushion that matters. The same could be true of the fullness of our lives. It’s what we bring to it. What shifts when we focus on creating a life of certainty? A life of certainty that whether you are…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christopher Titmuss – Week of 17 November, 2025

    We’re delighted that Christopher Titmuss is guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. We hope you find them enriching for your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Going Beyond the World

    Dharma practitioners tend to spend much time giving attention to practise. This is a worthwhile endeavour but it seems to go on and on until death. We can conclude that practice means improving the quality of our life, reducing suffering in our lives and showing kindness and compassion to others. Yes, this is significant. It is a credit to dedicated practitioners committed to exploration of such experiences as a way of life. This is not the core purpose of the Dharma but an important preparation for Going Beyond the World.
    We have to understand what we mean by the world and going beyond the world.
    In these five sessions, we will explore the core purpose in diverse ways. Talks, guided meditations and Q&A form the backbone of the inquiry. Every session will offer everyday examples of the theme of the session to enable seeing the world and confirming going beyond the world.

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

    Read More