It is one thing to deepen our practice through silent sitting meditation or on retreat, but how do we bring our practice into the dynamic, messy, and beautiful field of human relationship? What if our daily interactions offer the perfect gateway for awakening? This dharma talk is about letting go of the needless efforting of our social conditioning and the habits of the mind of separation, and learning to reside in the freedom of presence and vulnerability. Relating “in the moment” with one another is a form of meditation itself that requires open-ness, courage, and curiosity and allows for intimacy and transformation.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
-
Body and Heart: Qigong and Meditation for Harmony and Ease
Recorded :
November 3, 2024 Our heart’s experiences do not only affect our mental and emotional states. They also impact bodily experience, creating tension, tightness, spaciousness or ease. Likewise, our bodily experiences do not only generate physical sensations, but also inform and determine the energies of our heart. In this Sunday Sangha session, we will use qigong and meditation to…
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of July 12, 2021
This week’s theme is: Equally Close to All Things: Explorations in Equanimity.
Life includes both pleasant and unpleasant experiences, ups and down, joys and sorrows. Equanimity invites us to meet all of these with tenderness and poise and to nurture the capacity to be equally close to all things. Can we cultivate more spaciousness, intimacy and calm in the midst of life? This week we will explore finding a deeper, more stable wellbeing, a wellbeing that is not dependant on the external circumstances of our lives.
-
When the Path Becomes Natural
Recorded :
January 12, 2025 Much of the time, the path of meditation and awareness must be worked with intention, realigning ourselves with the teachings, with practice, lovingkindness and compassion. Other times, the path may become an effortless, natural part of our lives. We will explore the ways our practice feels easeful and our intentions metabolized and also how we…
-
An Open Heart in Hell
Recorded :
September 4, 2022 After a summer of extreme heat, drought and fire, we may well enter the autumn wondering how to manage the grief at our fragile and collapsing ecology. Taking the title An Open Heart in Hell from Nick Mulvey’s recent song “Prayer of my Own“, we’ll use this session to honour the pains of the heart without getting…
-
How to Recharge Your Practice with a Tried and True Inquiry
Recorded :
October 22, 2023 Even if you’ve been meditating for years, you probably encounter old patterns that seem impervious to your mindful awareness. Maybe at times these patterns are dormant, but during challenging moments they reappear and perhaps feel intractable. In this session we’ll explore inquiry practices that can help interrupt and disentangle the mind from its habitual “stuck”…
-
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.
-
The Gratification, The Danger and The Escape
Recorded :
September 23, 2018 The triad of gratification, danger, and escape is one of the Buddha’s most concise and simple teachings for investigating everyday lived experience. This formula can be applied to every single aspect of our experience. Many Buddhist scholars point out that this teaching contains the earliest roots of what we have come to know as the…
-
The Paramis of Generosity + Morality: A Movement Towards a Shared World
Recorded :
March 20, 2022 In a world riddled with addiction, violence and loneliness, it can feel challenging to figure out how to reclaim our humanity. We can begin by remembering that we belong to each other. On this Sunday Sangha, we’ll be exploring Generosity and Morality: the first two of the Paramis, the 10 perfections or attainments which show…
Discussion