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

Search Sangha Live

Refuge: The Heart’s Own Knowing

With Thanissara recorded on September 29, 2019.

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

It’s important to recognize that we are living in extremely challenging times, and because of this, we are going to experience some very painful and disturbing bodily feelings, emotions, and mind states. As profound uncertainty deepens and intensifies within and all around, our Dharma practice becomes ever more vital. The ground and heart of this practice is alignment with Refuge.

We are in a time that is inviting us to be more real, more authentic and to let go of what is no longer essential, to forgive it all, and to trust the capacity of the heart’s ability to regenerate and hone to integrity and love. Join Thanissara as she explores this in more depth in today’s session.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Wiebke Pausch

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Wiebke Pausch – Week of November 20, 2023

    This week’s topic is “May I be kind to myself”. May I be kind to myself – coming home to kindness and giving ourselves the love and care we need and deserve. What helps us to nurture this love – especially in the most challenging moments? We will explore how we can move towards more tenderness and open heartedness for ourselves and others.

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of June 14, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Contentment Blockers

    The Buddha named five key ways access to contentment is blocked, and gave clear and profound teachings that break through to the peace, joy, and freedom they obscure.

    Our hearts and minds can be pulled into a mission of greed, or sucked into aversion and rejection. We often swing between restlessness and sluggishness. It is normal to doubt the possibility of developing our experience in more free and delightful ways.

    This week we will explore the possibilities available to us to calm habitual patterns and invite vibrant-tranquility.

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of April 13

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, April 13 The refuge of presence Wednesday, April 15 Clear seeing: recognizing ourselves as that which doesn’t reject and doesn’t…

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of Sept 25, 2023

    This week’s topic is “Getting A Feel For Feeling”. As we perceive, we add a feeling (vedanā) to our experience. When we are unaware of this process and react to the projected feeling, it causes unnecessary suffering (dukkha). However, understanding this process and responding skilfully leads to one of the deepest senses of freedom available. Let’s explore this freedom through our daily meditations this week.

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of March 8, 2021

    This week’s topic is The Freedom of an Unassuming Mind.

    The Buddha used the image of a tangled and knotted thread to represent the complex roots of human suffering and distress. It takes sensitivity, persistence, and care to disentangle the tangle of ‘dukkha’. A tricky part of this is that our assumptions about the world radically shape the way the world appears, while remaining quite hidden to us. Fortunately, wisdom teachings and practices bring assumptions into view and support the untying of these unseen knots, opening us into a wide and free existence.

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 22 September, 2025

    We’re grateful to have Nirmala Werner guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Still Heart: Cultivating Equanimity in an Unsteady World

    In a world marked by constant change, uncertainty, and emotional intensity, equanimity can seem like a distant ideal-or even a form of indifference. But in the Buddhist tradition, equanimity (upekkhā) is not cold or passive. It is the spacious, steady heart that knows how to stay open, grounded, and present with whatever life brings.

    In this week we will explore equanimity as a deep source of inner freedom-neither detached nor reactive, but wise, loving, and awake.

    Through daily reflection and embodied practice, we will ask:

    What is true equanimity, and what is it not?

    How can we meet change without losing our ground?

    How do we love and let go-at the same time?

    And how can we live with a still heart in a restless world?

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Dharma, Sex, Intimacy and Covid

    Recorded : September 6, 2020

    We are more physically isolated during these days of Covid. Less physical contact, less access even to each others smiles beneath the masks we wear to care for each others’ health. Contact and intimacy are deeply important to humans, and in this session Sangha Live founding and guiding teacher Martin Aylward explores different forms of…

    Read More