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

How Does Meditation Support the Path of Awakening?

With Shaila Catherine recorded on December 15, 2019.

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

Scientists have documented some significant and measurable changes that occur as a result of meditation. But Buddhist practice is not limited to calm, pleasant, relaxing states of meditation. The liberating path includes a broad range of practices that produce a wide variety of benefits. We learn how we encounter the world of the senses; we unravel distortions of perception. We weaken defilements. We learn to let go. In this talk, Shaila Catherine points to the liberating potential of the path.

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

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of June 14, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Contentment Blockers

    The Buddha named five key ways access to contentment is blocked, and gave clear and profound teachings that break through to the peace, joy, and freedom they obscure.

    Our hearts and minds can be pulled into a mission of greed, or sucked into aversion and rejection. We often swing between restlessness and sluggishness. It is normal to doubt the possibility of developing our experience in more free and delightful ways.

    This week we will explore the possibilities available to us to calm habitual patterns and invite vibrant-tranquility.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Jaya Rudgard – Week of 21 April, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Jaya Rudgard guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Still Here, Still Now: Waking Up to Life

    As we develop our ability to remain present to experience our insight into the nature of that experience deepens. We’ll continue to explore this week how mindfulness can lead not just to less stress here and now but to the kind of seeing that will eventually free the heart-mind from all its self-created suffering.

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

    Read More

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of July 4, 2022

    This week’s topic is “Generosity at the Heart of One of Life’s Greatest Mysteries”. What meaning does generosity embody when we open our minds to accepting one of life’s greatest realities – that in fact we know and master very little. Let us explore the different ways in which facing our experiences with generosity allows us to let go of our preconceptions and taste all of life’s flavours and feel fully alive.

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of March 14, 2022

    This week’s theme is: Gathering in the Goodness. ‘Drop by drop the pot of goodness is filled.’ -Buddha. Gathering in community we become more than the sum of our parts. We are each supported by, and supporting others — meditating alone is far less easy. Just so, in each moment of mindfulness we gather body-heart-mind from distraction into presence and open possibilities for greater and greater well-being; not just for ourselves, but for all beings.

    Read More

  • Juha Penttilä

    Exploring Vastness of Awareness Practice

    In this session we’ll explore opening to the practices of vastness of awareness. Through listening and sensing we will open up to a sense of spaciousness and explore letting go within it.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings with Christopher Titmuss- Week of June 10, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Letting Go. An Act of the Will?”

    We pick up a hot coal in the morning from the wood burner.

    Ouch, we let go immediately. No thought. No desire. Instant letting go.

    The language of letting go has entered into the mind of the meditator.

    It is often not a solution but an ambitious state of mind.

    Letting go reveals an outcome of understanding.

    We can tell ourselves a 1000 times we should let go and it’s to no avail.

    The desire to let go shows we are not ready to let go.

    We will explore the preparation for letting go and wise responses employing at times letting go.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Warrior heart: transforming anger into strength, dynamism and creativity

    Dharma teachings point to how dangerous and destructive anger is, and how words and actions can cause great suffering. This class looks at skilful means for meeting and exploring anger, and for understanding and transforming it. Martin leads a specially oriented meditation, and his talk explores the inner strength and confidence which can arise from…

    Read More