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

Letting your heart break … open.

With Martin Aylward recorded on December 13, 2015.

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

Martin looks at current events with an eye on the suffering of refugees, the climate emergency and growing Islamophobia, exploring how we can both empathize with and respond to human suffering, while also cultivating joy, gratitude and ease of heart.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Kate Johnson

    Radical Friendship – Practicing Freedom in Unfree Places

    In these times of isolation and uprising, how can wise relationships be a refuge? Join us for an exploration of the Buddha’s teachings on spiritual friendship, and how they can help us embody freedom in all our relationships as we navigate the path to collective liberation.

    Read More

  • Dave Smith

    Mindfulness and the Addiction Economy

    Our devices have become weapons of mass distraction, we have lost the attention economy and now we are living in the addiction economy. Everyone is addicted, we all know it, few will admit it, yet we all seem to accept it. Turning inward and taking an honest look at our dissatisfaction and facing what fuels…

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of March 20 – 24, 2023

    This week’s topic is “The Art of Embodied Listening”. This week is an invitation to explore the skill of true, deep and embodied listening. Living in a culture where people are mainly self-focused, wanting to express themselves, we can look into our capacity to listen. Rather than talking to ourselves we can learn listening with our whole body to others, ourselves and to silence in which all phenomena arises. Creating space to express, really tuning into “what’s going on here?“ enables our stress, worries, fear and insecurities to be unveiled and liberated and is a powerful tool for cultivating insights.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christopher Titmuss – Week of 09 December, 2024

    We’re delighted to have Christopher Titmuss guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Liberation Of The Heart

    Join Christopher Titmuss for a week exploring the Brahma Viharas – the Immeasurable Ways of Being.

    The Brahma Viharas, traditionally known as Divine Abidings, point to something boundless in our human experience. While Brahma literally means “God,” its deeper root meaning is “Immeasurable.” The Buddha taught four specific ways to dwell in this immeasurable space: through radical love, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity.

    Over five morning sessions, Christopher will offer an overview of these teachings and explore each of these profound ways of abiding. By radical, we mean getting to the very root of what matters most.

    Whether you come with an open heart or a closed one, whether you’re new to meditation or a seasoned practitioner – all are welcome to join these transformative sessions.

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

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of 03 February, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Ayala Gill leading our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they bring depth and joy to your practice.

    This week’s theme is: From Suffering To Love

    Suffering is a messenger inviting us to include more of this moment with love. Rather than fussing, numbing and fixing, we pause in the midst of reactivity to breathe, come into the body, unhook from stories and feel emotions with love. This allows us to respond to life from love. Suffering returns us to love by showing us what we leave out of its limitless embrace.

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

    Read More

  • Ronya Banks

    You Are NOT Doomed: Breaking & Replacing Old Patterns

    You may have noticed that sometimes breaking old patterns is hard to do! But thanks to surviving ancient Buddhist teachings, we are NOT doomed to being stuck in the rut of the same old painful behavioral and cognitive patterns, and we can create new helpful patterns. This talk explores the nature of the conditioned mind…

    Read More

  • The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love

    When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion. When we know ourselves as a whole which subsumes everything, we cease to diminish or dismiss the mystery of being human….

    Read More