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 Nirmala Werner – Week of March 20 – 24, 2023
This week’s topic is “The Art of Embodied Listening”. This week is an invitation to explore the skill of true, deep and embodied listening. Living in a culture where people are mainly self-focused, wanting to express themselves, we can look into our capacity to listen. Rather than talking to ourselves we can learn listening with our whole body to others, ourselves and to silence in which all phenomena arises. Creating space to express, really tuning into “what’s going on here?“ enables our stress, worries, fear and insecurities to be unveiled and liberated and is a powerful tool for cultivating insights.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of March 21, 2022
This week’s topic is: Harmonising Our Life. The Buddha’s wisdom highlights how we often live entangled in stress and distress. The earliest mentions of this disharmonious state called it being in an argument with life. Dharma teachings invite us away from habitual rigidity and reactivity into a responsive and harmonising release. This week we will uncover deeper and more creative ways of attuning to life that support inner and outer freedom and well-being.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of February 13, 2023
This week’s topic is “Awakening in the Midst of Life”. Our relationship with life is revealed through our words, thoughts and actions. Reflecting on these in the light of the Dharma opens up possibilities of transformation and wellbeing. During this week we’ll explore ways of perceiving and engaging with experience that can help us to deepen our understanding and awaken to a fuller way of being in the world.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Miles Kessler – Week of June 5, 2023
This week’s topic is “Cultivating The 5 Spiritual Powers In Your Life”. The “5 Spiritual Powers” are mental faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, & wisdom. In this week of daily meditation, each day you will experience one of the 5 spiritual powers, and you will learn the best practices for awakening, developing, and cultivating these mental powers in your practice, and in your life.
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On Meeting Conflict and the Incompatible
Recorded :
December 11, 2023 “When you can’t go forward, when you can’t go back, and when you can’t stand still – where do you go? This is your place of non-abiding. The things you love and the things you hate: these are your teachers.” – Ajahn Chah How do we perceive conflict? We often see it as disturbing, but…
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What Feeds your Craving?
Recorded :
May 19, 2024 The Buddha discovered that craving is the cause by which stress comes into play. Letting go of this constant pursuing of our desires is possible. Befriending this human and natural craving needs the power of kind awareness and an ongoing reflection: What feeds my craving? And: What feeds letting go?
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Compassion is a Political Act
Recorded :
September 20, 2020 This session is invitation for white practitioners and others to join Vimalasara in a discussion on the theme of liberation, the central tenet of Buddhist teachings. No one is liberated until we are all liberated. What if we made explicit that Black Lives Matter was part of the Bodhisattva vow? How would that impact our…
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Cultivating mindfulness of sounds and meditative listening.
Recorded :
February 8, 2015 Worldwide Insight talk from Martine Batchelor: “Cultivating Mindfulness of Sounds and Meditative Listening”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.
Discussion