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

Sitting with Pointlessness – Living with Potentiality

With Vince Cullen recorded on October 16, 2022.

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

During a recent retreat, the teachers’ instruction was to hold the question ‘What is this?’ in mind. While sitting on the cushion, the thought struck me that my life is futile! I am genetically programmed for survival and sex; everything else is just distracting window-dressing. This talk will explore the journey from the apparent ‘futility’ of human existence to the ‘fertility’ of human experience; the crossing from pointlessness to potentiality.

Click here to access a PDF with quotes and references that may be of further interest.

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

Tags: liberation

Discussion

5 thoughts on “Sitting with Pointlessness – Living with Potentiality

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Ven. Pannavati Bikkhuni

    Developing insight into power.

    The Buddha talked about eight qualities of one who has transformed insight into a power. We examine these eight and apply introspection to assess where we are on the path to awakening and what is needed for completion.

    Read More

  • Pascal Auclair

    This Is What We Are: Foam, Bubbles, Mirage, Banana Tree Trunks and Magical Shows

    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.

    Read More

  • Frank Ostaseski

    Tonight the Subject is Love

    Love is the essential quality needed for the journey through life. The heart’s desire for deep connection fuels the journey, inspires and deepens our practice. This is why at some point we stop practicing to get anywhere, or to achieve anything… we just practice because we love it. Link to the YouTube video that we were…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of 27 April, 2026

    This week’s theme is: Resources for the Path of Engaged Practice.

    Engaged practice combines dharma wisdom with justice and liberation movement wisdom, allowing us to fly with the wings of compassion and wisdom towards the better world we know is possible.

    This week we’ll dive into ideas, practices and poems from those on the engaged practice path, strengthening our ability to participate in building justice, liberation and joy both within and beyond our individual lives.

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

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Staying In, Going Inwards: Inner Resources for Indoor Life

    Martin, the founding and guiding teacher of Sangha Live, leads our regular Sunday session, looking at skilful ways to meet this time of confinement and ‘forced retreat’. He offers various reflections on caring for ourselves and others, and makes plenty of time to share and explore together as a Sangha, as we lean into this…

    Read More

  • Kittisaro

    The Two Fundamental Roots

    I reflect this Sunday on the profound Surangama Sutra teaching of the Two Fundamental Roots: The root of “beginningless birth and death,” and the “primal bright essence of consciousness.” The Buddha warns that not knowing these two essential principles renders one’s spiritual efforts into a doomed futility, like “cooking sand in the hope of creating…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Practice and Prejudice: Waking up to our reality blinkers

    Martin writes: “Do you remember that Youtube video ‘Awareness test’ from a few years ago, where you’re asked to pay attention to one thing (passes made by the team in white) and you end up completely missing something else? (check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 – it only takes 30 seconds) We perceive reality in accordance with…

    Read More