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

Light on the path: pleasure, joy, fulfilment and free-ness.

With Martin Aylward recorded on September 24, 2017.

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

Our founding and guiding teacher Martin Aylward reflects on the importance of being nourished and uplifted by our practice. He looks at the nature of happiness and our sometimes difficult relationship with pleasure; explore opening up to joy, and point to ways in which dharma practice is fulfilling and freeing.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of July 19, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Identifying the Many Masks of the Inner Critic

    Often we think of the inner critic as the constant nagging inner discourse which dismisses our good qualities, questions our lovability, and our potential for goodness. Being a master/mistress of disguise, the inner critic takes on many forms; it wraps our decision making process in veils of doubt, pushes us into compulsive activity, traps us in paralysis, and distorts our views on others.

    Luckily, the Dharma path offers us tools to meet this painful heart-mind dynamic. This week we will practice summoning qualities like wisdom, kindness, equanimity, concentration, appreciation, compassion and inquiry, in order to meet our inner critic in a skilful way.

    Read More

  • Can love reveal ultimate reality?

    We know the cost to the reality of life through deprivation of love.

    Science has eliminated love from its analysis of reality.

    We cannot know ultimate reality though highlighting the mind and dismissing the heart or vice-versa.

    The Buddha made frequent reference to metta with its three-fold application of deep love, kindness or friendship.

    This talk will explore the relationship of love to ultimate reality.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of 16 February, 2026

    This week’s theme is: Going Gently Through the Dark

    A week of practice together, navigating both the darkness of winter and the inner states that can also feel dark, barren, wintry. A week of meditation and of community, of teachings and practice, or reminding ourselves of the preciousness and the possibilities of a flourishing human life.

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

    Read More

  • George Haas

    The meaningful life

    How can we use our meditation practice to repair attachment disturbances caused by our early conditioning, so that we can be completely ourselves in our relationships with others and in our work, as we pursue the path of awakening?

    Read More

  • Stephen Fulder

    Including Diversity and Differences in the Space of Awareness

    Diversity is a challenging concept today. Yet our equanimity is developed through meeting the great range of our inner experiences, as well as staying steady in the cacophony of the marketplace. There is enough space in our hearts to welcome the wonderful richness and diversity of life and of each other. Our open awareness makes…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    As wide as life and as open as space: practicing inclusivity.

    As we get familiar with the practice of meditation and the language of Dharma teachings, we can find ourselves getting comfortable, even complacent. Yet our practice in many ways is designed to make us uncomfortable! Designed to keep us open to ambiguity and uncertainty, to invite us to question and explore rather than to settle…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of September 4, 2023

    This week’s theme is “Which comes first, your practice or your life?” Does your life support your practice, or your practice your life? For me, things have been shifting recently, leaving me with lots to contemplate, particularly around the overlap between practice and systemic change. I’ll share some ideas and embodied relational techniques for working at these interesting edges, whilst giving you lots of open quiet meditation time, over our five mornings together.

    Read More