The communicative loop of listening and speaking forms a powerful karmic workshop. Language taps into our karmic archive, sankhara. It reaches other people and, if they are listening, there is mind-to-mind contact. Relational contact is intrinsically powerful because humans are intrinsically relational: when we engage together, our mutual responsiveness amplifies our efforts. Speaking and listening together empowers us to do good works, or drives us towards anger and fear. Sila. It empowers our development of mindfulness and calm concentration, or it is a channel for distraction. Samadhi. It carries wisdom and deep inquiry or driveling trivia. Panna. All of these are enfolded in meditation in which the doorway to speech is opened.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of 16 – 20 October, 2023
Daily meditations with Martin Aylward.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of 5 February, 2024
This week’s topic is “Fear and Fearlessness”. A week of exploring how our mind gets gripped, and how our practice frees us. We’ll explore causes and conditions of fear, and the ways fear can dissolve, and the radical possibility of a fearless life.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Jaya Rudgard – Week of July 24, 2023
This week’s theme is “Meditations on the Five Great Elements of Nature”. The five elements or energetic properties of nature (earth, water, fire, wind and space) feature frequently in the Buddha’s teaching and are a wonderful support for meditation and insight. This week we will practice with these elements as skilful means for contemplating body and world, and for cultivating the mind.
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The Art of Savoring
Recorded :
November 23, 2025 In the practice of meditation, we are often focused on the task of getting to the cushion and paying attention, but how much of this task are we actually enjoying? To really enjoy ourselves in meditation, we need a practice that goes beyond attention and mindfulness alone. We need to find joy in the micro…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of May 2, 2022
This week’s theme is: Opportunities for Deepening Compassion and Wisdom. Dharma teachings and practices invite us to use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts. Rather than seeing the unwanted aspects of life as obstacles, we can relate to them as the raw material necessary for awakening genuine wisdom and compassion.
The cultivation of wisdom and compassion for ourselves leads naturally to compassion for others. True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings. -
Genuine Happiness: An Alternative Perspective
Recorded :
July 14, 2019 So much of what we hear and learn about within Dharma practice places an arguably unnecessary emphasis on suffering (dukkha). While the acceptance of suffering (dukkha) is an important and essential aspect of the path, it is by no means the end of the story. In one of the Buddha’s oldest descriptions of what it…
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Bringing the world into the heart.
Recorded :
May 7, 2017 What does it mean to bring the world into the heart? In these divided times, for those of us practicing peace, for those of us dedicated to liberation, we’ve been offered a grand opportunity to accept what we haven’t been willing to accept. To give what we haven’t been able to give. To love what…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of January 22, 2024
This week’s topic is “Wholehearted Presence”. Meeting experience as it unfolds with presence and interest, we uncover the wellbeing and freedom available to us on the Dharma path. Through this week’s exploration we will open to what supports a wholehearted approach to practice, and understand what is nourished and cultivated when we relate to experience in this way.
Discussion