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.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Apr 29 – 3 May, 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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Aditthana: The art of commitment
Recorded :
January 3, 2021 New year’s resolutions are often unrealistically ambitious and doomed to failure. In this first Sangha Live class of the year, our founding teacher Martin Aylward explores the art of wise commitment; how to refine what one is committing to in a way that is useful, precise, realistic and time-boundaried; elements that allow us to align…
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The ‘Self’ is Insubstantial
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February 5, 2023 Humans live in the spell of the self, as if it had substantial existence.
Dharma offers a reflection/meditation/inquiry into this phenomenon.
One who asks ‘Who Wakes Up?’ lives in the spell.
Teaching will offer ways to a non-intellectual realisation of emptiness of self.
Be devoted to this in daily life – until obvious as seeing colour for one with sound eyesight.
To wake up from the dream of self is liberating. -
Daily life practice – the cultivation of virtue in ordinary action.
Recorded :
December 11, 2016 Shaila discusses the cultivation of virtue. Her talk will considers the relationship between virtue practices, and the more popular practices of compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom.
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A Relational Dhamma
Recorded :
October 17, 2021 If humans are intrinsically relational creatures, how do we integrate this understanding with the Buddha’s teachings on suffering and its cessation? Relational suffering and craving? Dependent origination? In this session, we explore the power and necessity of a relational understanding of the Buddha’s teachings. We discuss and practice relational aspects of the path, including the…
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With a generous spirit: your money and your life.
Recorded :
March 26, 2017 We often hear about Dana, or generosity, only when being asked for donations! Yet Buddha taught that “the practice of generosity is a foundation for happiness”. This session with Worldwide Insight guiding teacher Martin Aylward explores the depth and beauty of generosity, and how its practice can transform our own hearts and minds.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of Oct 25, 2021
This week’s theme is Making Sense of Self.
Although the Buddha encourages us to not indulgently ponder whether the self is real or not, he did offer us a way to explore how the sense of self appears. This methodology, called the khandhas (aggregates: the heap of heaps), exposes all aspects we gather together to create and hold to our sense of self: form (body); vedanā (subtle preference); perception; saṅkhāra (mental formations – like intention, attention…); and consciousness (knowing). -
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of 01 December, 2025
This week’s theme is: Before Reactivity
Desire and ill-will very often drive our experience without being noticed. Learning to stay in the space before it arises, no matter how uncomfortable it can be is the entry point that leads to resilience. This week Sophie Boyer invites us to explore some ways to become more familiar with that space and experience the freedom that emerge from it. Resilience as a space of non-reactivity.
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