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

Practicing for the love of it.

With Martin Aylward recorded on January 17, 2016.

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

Before the session Martin wrote: “A Burmese teacher once told a friend of mine to always enjoy his practice. We love meditation in theory, and we want to grow and transform, and we certainly would like to be liberated from our suffering. And yet! We easily turn meditation into a chore, and feel discouraged by our spiritual ‘progress’ or lack of it.”

This class explores holding our practice lightly, while really committing our heart to it, with time for meditation, reflections from the teacher, and interactive video discussion with participants.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    Pride Every Day of Our Lives

    Pride celebrations are dedicated to celebrating the freedoms we have as LGBTQIA2S+ people and for campaigning for the human rights of Queer and Trans people around the world. 50 years ago the Gay Liberation Front held their first march in London. I was a kid, when history was being made. History is still being made…

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings with Nathan Glyde – Week of September 16, 2024

    This week’s topic is “That Changes Everything”. The Buddha instructed us to “notice how all conditioned things change”. How we understand this instruction changes depending on which words we emphasise. If we emphasise ‘change’ it sounds like “that’s simply how it is”. If we emphasise ‘how’ and ‘conditioned’, it invites us to question and play a part.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of 04 November, 2024

    This week’s theme is: Love’s Fullness

    Mindfulness is a practice of remaining present, open and loving to the deepest truth of this moment as it arises and dissolves. It invites us into an intimate, warm and embodied relationship with life, where each moment is sensed, felt and known with love. The four foundations of mindfulness return us to love’s fullness.

    Read More

  • Chris Willard

    The Joy of Letting Go: Simplicity and Renunciation

    In our consumer culture, we fall for the illusion that more choice-in things, work, people, even spiritual paths-leads to more freedom, when often the opposite is true. As Jack Kornfield says, we live “in an era of unlimited desires but limited resources, when we think it’s the opposite.” More mindful awareness of our consumption isn’t…

    Read More

  • Wisdom and compassion in our relationships: two sides of the same coin.

    Wisdom and compassion are two wonderful qualities that grow in us as our practice deepens. Diving into each one and into the inseparable nature of the two reveals the way in which they support and give rise to one another, and the way they manifest in our relationships: with ourselves, with others, with the world….

    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

  • Toby Sola

    The Concentration Algorithm

    Discover a “concentration algorithm” that transforms your practice. Instead of fighting distractions, this approach teaches you to work with them skillfully. When your concentration wavers, notice what captured your attention, then make that distraction your new meditation object. This process reveals two valuable insights: first, that any sensory experience can serve as a meditation anchor…

    Read More