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
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with James Rafael – Week of April 24, 2023
This week’s topic is “Fluidity and Flux: Gateways to a Kinder, More Inclusive World”. The Buddha’s teachings on impermanence and compassion offer us gateways to cultivate a kinder, more inclusive world for all. Impermanence connects us to a sense of fluidity and flux, where we can see through the illusion of solid binaries and fixed identities. This can inspire us toward action that includes, appreciates and holds others with kindness.
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of May 16, 2022
Daily meditations with Martin Aylward.
-
I Am Not OK, You Are Not OK, That Is OK.
Recorded :
September 22, 2024 Reflection on suffering and the ending of suffering, with focus on second Noble Truth.
-
The Spectrum of Awareness Practices
Recorded :
February 2, 2020 This session will explore different ways in which attention works and associated meditation practices: from focused awareness, to flexible awareness, to natural awareness. We’ll do a number of fun experiential practices in hopes of understanding a variety of ways to meditate and how we can refine our own practice. Diana draws from her latest…
-
Neuro-Somatic Mindfulness (NSM): An Integrated Approach to Embodiment, Personal Well-Being, Evolution, & Conscious Awakening
Recorded :
March 2, 2025 Roshi Fleet will describe and offer a stack of embodiment practices for building the neural architecture for optimal well-being, psychological and spiritual evolution, and conscious awakening, providing a pathway to a joyful life of meaning and purpose. Specifically he will offer practices for targeting the five neural networks of healing and awakening.
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of May 13, 2024
This week’s topic is “Trust the Process”. There is a natural space that is always available to us. A space before thoughts, before duality. Every day there will be an opportunity to come back to this primary experience that is safe and complete. A space before the beginning. This week let’s trust the process together.
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Yahel Avigur – Week of 14 July, 2025
We’re delighted to have Yahel Avigur guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions enrich and support your practice.
This week’s theme is: Metta — Healing All Aspects
This week, we’ll open to the healing power of metta – loving-kindness, or goodwill – as a transformative force in our lives. We’ll practice offering this gentle warmth first to those we naturally care about, and to ourselves. Gradually, we’ll widen the circle, allowing metta to infuse our relationships with neutral people, those we find difficult, and ultimately all beings. As kindness suffuses more corners of our hearts and lives, we may begin to discover a growing sense of spaciousness and connection – and with it, insight, balance, and inner freedom.
Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.
-
Trust in the Goodness of your Practice
Recorded :
January 26, 2020 Basic goodness is the fundamental ground of your own heart and mind and being. A buoyant heart allows us to face the ‘infinite ocean of suffering’ and stay open-hearted; It is the foundation for living the Bodhisattva vows, it is how we keep on waking up and showing up and growing up, for the benefit…
Discussion