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.
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Body and space / matter and consciousness.
Recorded :
May 29, 2016 How can we become more grounded and more intimate with ourselves while becoming more spacious and free from endless random mental chatter? Let’s explore in the ways in which the body is such a precious help for meditation practice and in mindfulness in everyday life. Let’s explore as well the central role of space, emptiness,…
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Attitude to practice.
Recorded :
December 10, 2015 Worldwide Insight talk from James Baraz: “Attitude to Practice”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.
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Mindfulness of feeling tone (vedana).
Recorded :
April 12, 2015 During this session Martine practices and explores mindfulness of the feeling tones, which is the second foundation of the practice of mindfulness. First, she guides a meditation on mindfulness of the feeling tones. Afterwards she tries to define feeling tones and how to be mindful of them in our daily life. The Pali term Vedana…
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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.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of May 9, 2022
This week’s topic is Disentangle the Net of Needs. We all have needs. Existential needs, needs for safety, connection, spirituality and much more. Our attitude towards needs, what strategies we choose to meet them and what boundaries we set in place determines to a large extent our happiness and peace of mind. In this week we want to explore skilful ways to handle our needs, feelings and boundaries. We will draw from Buddhist teachings, mindful practices and elements of non-violent communication to support us in our daily lives.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of May 27 – 31, 2024
This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.
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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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Moving towards connection – the opportunity of working with difficult emotions to deepen relationship
Recorded :
November 5, 2017 Worldwide Insight talk from Jessica Morey: “Moving Towards Connection – The Opportunity of Working with Difficult Emotions to Deepen Relationship”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.
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