The encounter with sensory experiences can lead to insight and calm, or reactivity and suffering. How do you guard your mind in the midst of a daily barrage of sensory input? How do you protect your mind so that tranquility and wisdom will be well established? The Buddha encouraged restraint of the senses, but this restraint does not require avoidance of sensory contacts or control of the external environment. In this talk, Shaila Catherine will describe how mindfulness allows us to meet the experiences of sensory contact – of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking with a mind free of reactivity. Mindfulness protects the mind so that it does not come under the sway of defilements. Mindfulness is a special quality of attention that is balanced in the moment of observing experience. Before looking, before reaching, before speaking, before any activity, we can establish the intention of mindfully meeting the experience without giving rise to anger, irritation, lust, fear, or any defilement. The practice of sensory restraint leads to a life of happiness and joy, and lays the foundation for experiences of deep concentration and awakening.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Antonia Sumbundu and Christopher Titmuss – Week of 27 October, 2025
We’re delighted to have Antonia Sumbundu guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.
This week’s theme is: Awakening Courage: Embracing Being, Belonging, and Becoming
A week of morning meditations to awaken the heart’s quiet, natural courage. Through presence, reflection, and stillness, these sessions invite us to rest in being – gently returning to awareness itself; to open into belonging – feeling our inseparable connection with the web of life; and to trust our becoming – the unfolding of wisdom and love through all that we do.
In the rhythm of being, belonging, and becoming, we are invited to live with authenticity, tenderness, and wholehearted courage.
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Dancing with the Devil – Coming Home in the Midst of our Emotional Storms
Recorded :
June 27, 2021 There is a big emphasis in our society on doing good and being right. But rather than trying harder, being perfect and becoming a “better person” what about embracing ourselves just as we are, with all of our emotions — with our light, and with our shadow? In this talk we explore an all-inclusive approach…
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Appreciation and joy
Recorded :
September 11, 2017 We can cultivate the attitude of appreciation and allow it to enhance and strengthen our mindfulness practice. Shaila Catherine speaks about the powerful impact that joy and appreciation can have on the quality of our minds, and the development of our spiritual path.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of Dec 19 – 23, 2022
Daily meditations with Martin Aylward.
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Simplicity: The Heart of the Dharma
Recorded :
July 21, 2024 Simplicity underlies Dharma practice. It’s common that when people begin to meditate, even if they have a full life with a job and family, they begin to realize that simplicity is a deep value. Pursuing conventional goals feels less meaningful or satisfying than finding ease and straightforwardness in our approach to life. Simplicity cuts across…
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Surrendering the Clever Mind into the Listening Heart
Recorded :
February 14, 2021 As our deepening poly-crises shift us from a sense of predictability, stability, and even a future, into crisis management as a daily norm, how can our practice support inner resilience and a meaningful response? We will touch on Dharma practices and teachings that support the internal shifts needed as we transition from over-reliance on separative…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of 4 March, 2024
This week’s topic is “Wide and Deep: an Integrated Practice in Meditation and in Life”. This week at Sangha live, the morning meditations with Martin will draw each day on elements of dharma practice and understanding that can be both cultivated in meditation, and applied in daily activity. We’ll encourage a steady participation in the mornings through the week, and reflect on using the daily themes to explore our habits, beliefs and reactions throughout each day.
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Muditā: Appreciative Joy
Recorded :
November 20, 2022 Of the four traditional heart qualities in Buddhism, appreciative joy – muditā – gets less attention than lovingkindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), or equanimity (upekkhā). But the cultivation of sincere joy at the success of another greatly enriches our well-being and happiness. We will explore this powerful form of joy together, as well as what blocks…
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