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

Search Sangha Live

How do we stay connected to the essence of practice through life’s changing forms?

With Christelle Bonneau recorded on September 17, 2017.

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

How do we keep meditation practice alive, both firm enough and flexible enough to respond to our changing needs, health issues and practical considerations? How do we stay connected to the essence of practice day-to-day, and make peace inside with reality as it actually is?

In this session we explore a few different forms of meditation, and a few postures and micro-practices that can be used at any time in the day. Above all, we clarify what makes a real, honest and engaged practice, that goes beyond physical postures and sitting meditation, to meet life’s difficulties with an aware and loving attitude towards oneself and others.

We look at the vision we have of things and the quality of the relationship we have with life, and we reflect on the way we are affected by the experiences we create out of them.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Practice as a Way of Remembrance

    Recorded : October 18, 2020

    Many are referring to this time as apocalyptic. Fair enough. It can seem as though everywhere we turn a dismantling of some sort is in the works. While we might intellectually feel able to embrace the change upon us, for many it can be easy to fall into overwhelm, hopelessness, even despair. What do the…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Letting your heart break … open.

    Recorded : December 13, 2015

    Martin looks at current events with an eye on the suffering of refugees, the climate emergency and growing Islamophobia, exploring how we can both empathize with and respond to human suffering, while also cultivating joy, gratitude and ease of heart.

    Read More

  • dale borglum

    The end of fear: conscious living, conscious dying.

    Recorded : March 19, 2017

    Until we are free there is a fundamental fear of the spaciousness that is our true nature. Can we become intimately familiar with the urge to run away from the love, the spaciousness, that is the essence of this moment? All fear is fear of death, fear based on our identification only with that which…

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of May 27 – 31, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.

    Read More

  • Lisa Ernst

    Working with Stress and Fear

    Recorded : July 17, 2022

    Not all stress is bad. Yet without mindful awareness, anticipatory stress may spiral into reactivity, paralyzing fear and suffering. How do we meet this stress mindfully, use it skilfully, then let go?

    Read More

  • Willa Blythe Baker

    Loving Awareness: Finding Freedom Within

    Recorded : February 26, 2023

    “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