Simplicity underlies Dharma practice. It’s common that when people begin to meditate, even if they have a full life with a job and family, they begin to realize that simplicity is a deep value. Pursuing conventional goals feels less meaningful or satisfying than finding ease and straightforwardness in our approach to life. Simplicity cuts across the physical, verbal, and mental realms, and enables the deep seeing that can free the mind. In our session, we’ll explore simplicity as an act of kindness and wisdom, and also an expression of liberation, so needed in today’s world.
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Joy is Always Available
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July 13, 2025 On autopilot, our mind often resists opening to joy with: “But right now in my life, there is …” So we explore what stands in our way of the unexpected ordinariness of joy. We’ll discover how the awakening factor of meditative joy (piti) illuminates our capacity to open to delight and rapture, allowing our hearts…
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Awakening Joy: Practice as a Path of Happiness
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January 13, 2019 Joy is both a Factor of Enlightenment and one of the four Divine Abodes. Today, as we are bombarded with news that heightens our fear and sadness about the world, more than ever it’s vital to understand the importance of joy as a central aspect of spiritual practice. We need to remember how to stay…
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Genuine Happiness: An Alternative Perspective
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March 10, 2024 So much of what we hear and learn about within Dharma practice places an arguably unnecessary emphasis on suffering (dukkha). While the acceptance of suffering (dukkha) is an important and essential aspect of the path, it is by no means the end of the story. In one of the Buddha’s oldest descriptions of what it…
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Equanimity: Finding Balance in Difficult Times
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January 16, 2022 In times like these with so much uncertainty, fear and suffering, how can we keep our center in a world that sometimes seems to be spinning out of control?
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The ultimate relationship: opening to love.
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February 19, 2017 We are deeply conditioned to look for love outside ourselves. In that desperate search, we not only experience the frustration and the futility of grasping, but we lose sight of who we authentically are. Join us as we engage in practices that not only remind us of our true nature, but guide us to a…
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This Is What We Are: Foam, Bubbles, Mirage, Banana Tree Trunks and Magical Shows
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January 22, 2023 In this session, we will explore the Buddha’s wise use of images in the Phena Sutta. We will see how these are representations of the deepest teachings of Insight Meditation and how they can be relevant for us today in our quest to free the mind and heart from constriction. There will be time to practice together guided by Pascal and time for questions and beginning of answers.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of June 7, 2021
This week’s theme is: Mudita – Celebrating Aliveness. Our hearts possess infinite capacities: they can express friendship in the most surprising circumstances and turn with tenderness and care to those who suffer. But aside from kindness and compassion, there is also the potential for deep appreciation, ease, delight and joy within us. While such perspectives are always available, the access might be blocked by voices of doubt, shame or negativity. In the upcoming weekly sessions, we strengthen our capacity to find nourishing perspectives and to rejoice in the beauty within and around us with the help of guided meditations and practices for everyday life.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of 10 November, 2025
We are delighted to have Ayala Gill guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and enrich your practice.
This week’s theme is: Three Jewels: Love, Truth, Belonging
We will explore the “Three Jewels” of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha through the immediate, embodied experience of love. By diving into the felt sense of this moment, we discover the precious refuge of love, truth and belonging.
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