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

  • Pamela Weiss

    An Appropriate Response

    What does it take to respond rather than react to the increasing complexity and divisiveness of our world? This talk will explore Buddhist teachings that illuminate the sources of our fundamental reactivity, and reveal ways to help us see and see through it.

    Read More

  • Ayya Santussika

    Choices – The Ones that Matter and the Ones that Don’t

    How many choices will you make today? Which ones are likely to lead to happiness and which to suffering? Often we have many more options than we think we do. The Buddha’s teachings offer clear guidance on how to make choices that help us develop our habits, our character, and our karma in a way…

    Read More

  • 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

  • Integrity – A Bridge Over Troubled Water

    In challenging situations, we can lose our ground. Not knowing what to rely on, we are liable to reactivity, either withdrawing or lashing out. Fear and anger are very human reactions to what we perceive as injustice or threat. While there is no need to condemn us for experiencing them, our hearts might yearn for…

    Read More

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of March 27, 2022

    This week’s topic is “Movement in Stillness”. The flow of life is unpredictable, and its instability and the changes it presents often throw us off balance. The Buddha suggests adopting an approach where beauty and freedom can emerge at the center of this “movement in stillness.” Throughout this week, we will explore the challenges that arise when facing the realities of birth, life, and death, and how open, stable attention and clear perception can support a deeper understanding of the natural flow of all things.

    Read More

  • Christelle Bonneau

    The First Duty of Love is to Listen

    What is meditation and everyday life mindfulness practice but listening? True listening is neutral, non-judgemental, welcoming and silent. It’s a window to a larger vision and freedom, which gets us out of the narrow jail of self and creates an intimacy with life in which we feel more alive and loving. Join Christelle to explore…

    Read More