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

  • Shaila Catherine

    Appreciation and joy

    We can cultivate the attitude of appreciation and allow it to enhance and strengthen our mindfulness practice. Shaila Catherine speaks about the powerful impact that joy and appreciation can have on the quality of our minds, and the development of our spiritual path.

    Read More

  • Being a Bodhisattva

    What is this incredible archetype? How does it show up in Buddhist history and teachings? How is it relevant to our current times? This talk will explore the idea of beings who commit to waking up in order to respond to the suffering of the world. And might we be one? Or want to?

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Shireen Jilla – Week of 29 September, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Shireen Jilla guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May her teachings enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Equanimity: Balancing at the Centre of the Seesaw of Life

    Every morning we will explore a different aspect of equanimity, this inner steadiness, and how we nurture it in our practice. What is this felt sense of spacious ease and how is it a wise check to overwhelming compassion? Actively engaging with our experience, how do we deeply let go? And finally, potently, we will explore equanimity as the gift of grace.

    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 01 September, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Sophie Boyer guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they enrich and support your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Equanimity – What Is Always At Rest

    Sophie Boyer will lead our Daily Mediations this week, inviting us to re-attune to what is always at rest, what never struggles, what never pushes or pulls. Join us to explore the non dual nature of life together.

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

    Read More

  • Deborah Eden Tull - Senior Dharma Teacher

    Endarkenment: Embracing the Medicine of Light and Dark

    As we enter the darker months of the year, consider the profound restoration and healing that darkness offers us— both physically and symbolically. Darkness is often considered the absence of light, but it is actually a vital and regenerative essence of nature and consciousness. This session is an experiential exploration of the interplay of light…

    Read More

  • Muditā: Appreciative Joy

    Of the four traditional heart qualities in Buddhism, appreciative joy – muditā – gets less attention than lovingkindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), or equanimity (upekkhā). But the cultivation of sincere joy at the success of another greatly enriches our well-being and happiness. We will explore this powerful form of joy together, as well as what blocks…

    Read More