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

Search Sangha Live

Illness, death, urgency and love.

With Gregory Kramer recorded on February 5, 2017.

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

Yes, the Buddha repeatedly recommended that each of us contemplate our own aging, illness and death. But what gap do you feel between an abstract contemplation and the actuality of this fragile and limited life? With death rolling in like a mountain, quickly and from all sides, do you feel any samvega, or sense of spiritual urgency? Finally, are you alone in all of this? Could you truly and effectively engage this path, this fragile life, alone? And if you are engaging with others—which is taking refuge in the sangha, ordained and lay—does your spiritual urgency support the blossoming of love as an integral part of wisdom?

For a powerful reflection on aging, illness and death, Greg suggests you might read the Pabbatopama Sutta: The Simile of the Mountains. It can be found at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn03/sn03.025.than.html

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Uncertainty, Stability & Love: Everything Comes With Everything

    Recorded : May 12, 2024

    Life is never only good or only bad, pleasant or unpleasant, comfortable or uncomfortable, just or unjust. Cultivating a wide spacious perspective within the reality of uncertainty gives rise to a bigger capacity to meet our lives more gently, kindly, and clearly, with more stability and more love. Join us as we explore perspectives and practices to…

    Read More

  •

    Five tenets of a whole life path

    Recorded : November 19, 2017

    Many long for a way to “integrate” their Buddhist practice with what is often called “the rest of my life.” This often fails. Doesn’t integration refer to separate things that must be brought together? In this talk, Gregory offers what he calls the Five Tenets of a Whole Life Path, a practical, yet demanding, way…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of May 30, 2022

    This week’s theme is: Bringing the Practice to Life. The Buddha’s teachings emphasise the whole of our lives as a rich ground for exploration and growth.  Through meditation, we cultivate skills and ways of relating that can be applied beyond formal meditation. This week we will explore bringing the practice to different areas and aspects of our lives. We will open to taste how this enlivens and rejuvenates our practice, and how it can nurture wellbeing for others and ourselves.

    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

  • Tenku Ruff Osho

    Not Knowing as an Active Practice

    Recorded : April 18, 2021

    We sometimes think of not knowing as something negative, but is it really? Truly not-knowing allows spaciousness, openness, and much greater intimacy. When we make not-knowing an intentional action, the barriers that hold us back from true intimacy begin to dissolve, offering much deeper connection with each other, and with the entire universe.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    With a generous spirit: your money and your life.

    Recorded : March 26, 2017

    We often hear about Dana, or generosity, only when being asked for donations! Yet Buddha taught that “the practice of generosity is a foundation for happiness”. This session with Worldwide Insight guiding teacher Martin Aylward explores the depth and beauty of generosity, and how its practice can transform our own hearts and minds.

    Read More