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

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The practice of pleasure and delight (or the spiritual art of having fun).

    Dharma teachings importantly emphasise suffering, compassion, renunciation, desire, non-reactivity, peacefulness. All these are potent themes, yet ones which can make our practice feel overly heavy, unnecessarily serious, maybe even uptight! Dharma practice equally points us towards a playful nature, light-heartedness and ease, delight and the capacity to really enjoy life. Especially when we can get…

    Read More

  • Settled Form, Steady Heart: Qigong for Mindful Presence

    When our physical energy feels restless or flat, it becomes harder to meet our inner experience with care and attention. This is why embodied practices such as qigong and mindful breathing are valuable: they help settle our body, making it far easier for our heart to find a steadier, more skillful unfolding. Please join this…

    Read More

  • Deborah Eden Tull - Senior Dharma Teacher

    The Unguarded Heart: Meeting Anger and Resentment with Love and Forgiveness

    In this talk, we explore anger, resentment, jealousy, and other difficult emotions – learning how to see clearly and meet anger with true love and acceptance. We explore our misunderstandings about anger and learn how to cultivate the compassionate presence that offers a vast and courageous expression of love. Compassion’s perception of anger is more…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of 13 April, 2026

    This week’s theme is: Trusting the Path of Love

    The path of love is a path of transformation, both personal and collective. It is not an easy journey: moments of doubt and overwhelm are part of its terrain, and can sometimes erode our faith. To sustain and deepen our trust, we’ll explore the nature of transformation itself, while cultivating practices that steady and sustain an open heart.

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

    Read More

  • Clear Presence, Sweet Absence

    Dharma practice encourages us to see the present moment clearly – to meet and respond to it well. What is here in this moment? Another dimension of practice is to learn to appreciate absence: What is this moment free from? Having skill in both these dimensions brings us closer to the joy and peace that…

    Read More

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    Coming Home To The Body with Breath

    The teachings of the dharma originate from meditation, sitting in zazen, in samadhi. Everything we need to know is in the depths of our being, but we must first come home. One breath at a time, until it is safe for us to turn all feelings back on, and be at home in the body….

    Read More