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

Methodology, Ideology and Cosmology: Three Dimensions of a Full Spectrum Practice

With Martin Aylward recorded on October 11, 2020.

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

Dharma practice is sometimes seen too reductively through a uniquely meditative lens. This class looks not only at what you practice (methodology) but also at why you practice (ideology) and at your understanding of the nature of reality; the way you make sense of the universe, of time and space, self and world, life and death (cosmology).

If that sounds a little abstract, rest assured that we’ll be exploring in a down to earth, experiential way, connecting the dots between our everyday practices, their liberating goal, and the way we can meet reality in ever deeper and freer ways.

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

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of July 12, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Equally Close to All Things: Explorations in Equanimity.

    Life includes both pleasant and unpleasant experiences, ups and down, joys and sorrows. Equanimity invites us to meet all of these with tenderness and poise and to nurture the capacity to be equally close to all things. Can we cultivate more spaciousness, intimacy and calm in the midst of life? This week we will explore finding a deeper, more stable wellbeing, a wellbeing that is not dependant on the external circumstances of our lives.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of March 29, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Re-Enchanting Our Practice. As much as anything else our practice of mindfulness and meditation can become a habit, and either turn dull, or come with a sense of obligation, work, or duty. In this week together, we will explore ways to bring imagination, embodiment, and intimacy to our practice. After all, meditation is as much a craft as an artform – a chance to discover inner landscapes, hidden mysteries and fascinating insights.

    As much as anything else our practice of mindfulness and meditation can become a habit and either turn dull or come with a sense of obligation, work or duty. In this week together, we will explore ways to bring imagination, embodiment, and intimacy to our practice. After all, meditation is as much a craft as an art form – a chance to discover inner landscapes, hidden mysteries and fascinating insights.

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of Oct 25, 2021

    This week’s theme is Making Sense of Self.
    Although the Buddha encourages us to not indulgently ponder whether the self is real or not, he did offer us a way to explore how the sense of self appears. This methodology, called the khandhas (aggregates: the heap of heaps), exposes all aspects we gather together to create and hold to our sense of self: form (body); vedanā (subtle preference); perception; saṅkhāra (mental formations – like intention, attention…); and consciousness (knowing).

    Read More

  • Your Most Expensive Resource

    There is a substance we need for every meaningful part of our life. We only have a small amount of it, it’s being spent constantly, we can’t get more, and we’re surrounded by predators hungry for it. Attention: every moment we give it to something, and if we don’t choose wisely, a salesperson or an…

    Read More

  • Embodied Intentionality

    This session is an exploration of the ‘truths’ that might lead to conviction, to directed karma, to mindfulness as remembering-to-remember, and to the path to joy & beyond.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The nature of experience. Part 3: Non Self Existence.

    Today’s session is the third in a special run of three consecutive sessions with Martin, where he looks deeply at the nature of experience through Buddha’s profound descriptions of reality – Impermanence, Emptiness, Non self-existence. The classes point directly to how these themes can come alive in our practice and understanding, looking at the personal,…

    Read More