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

Search Sangha Live

The Beauty of Being

With Leela Sarti recorded on May 27, 2018.

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

Leela says: “Over the years my interest in awakening has be reformulated as how to be a real human being. In this session I invite you to explore, with me, the possibility of being grounded in the natural goodness of being. We will inquire how to live a full life from the ground of presence, and being yourself in peace with others.

A human life infused with natural beauty, a fulfilling life, means to develop a taste for certain values; a taste for truth, dignity, depth and simply being. These qualities are present all the time, you don’t have to achieve them, you just need to appreciate them and orient yourself towards them so that you allow yourself the time and opportunity for them to emerge.”

The poem Leela reads out is “Having loved enough” by Mark Nepo.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Love for the world

    Recorded : December 17, 2017

    In our last class of 2017, our guiding teacher Martin offers reflections on life, love and liberation, looking particularly at some of the challenging events and elements of worldly life, and pointing towards a skilful, loving and courageous engagement with the world and everyone in it.

    Read More

  • Jessica Morey

    Sustaining Ourselves with Joy

    Recorded : May 16, 2021

    The Buddha taught about many forms of joy as both the path of practice and its fruit. In this session, we’ll explore the practice and discipline of cultivating and savoring joy in our life and our practice. Joy is an important balancing factor as we honestly face the suffering of the world and commit to…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of September 5, 2022

    This week’s topic is “Awakening into Experience Here and Now”. “You shouldn’t chase after the past
    or place expectations on the future.
    What is past
    is left behind.
    The future
    is as yet unreached.
    Whatever quality is present
    you clearly see right there,
    right there.
    Not taken in,
    unshaken,
    that’s how you develop the heart.” (MN 131)

    The essence of the Buddha’s teachings lies in these words. Unshakability and freedom are at the heart of awakening, they are what we cultivate in our practice. This week we will practice turning to our experience in ways that wake us up, right here and now.

    Read More

  •

    A Relational Dhamma Integrates the Arahat and Bodhisattva Visions of the Buddhist Path (and why this matters to our living Dhamma path)

    Recorded : March 3, 2019

    Gregory writes: “The early Buddhist vision of the arahat ideal is sometimes taken to imply that individual awakening is the sole aim of the Path whereas the later Buddhist vision of the bodhisattva ideal centers on the liberation of all beings. The gap between practice aimed at solitary awakening and practice aimed at liberation of…

    Read More

  • Kaira Jewel Lingo

    Staying Open Through Change, Loss and Disruption

    Recorded : October 31, 2021

    When we are faced with suffering and uncertainty or life becomes overwhelming we can tense up, resist or try to control. But when we open and let go in the midst of change and release expectations we get in touch with enormous possibility and a powerful freedom.

    Read More

  • Justine Dawson

    The Appropriate Response

    Recorded : May 8, 2022

    When a monk asked the 10th Century Zen master Yunmen, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?” Yunmen replied, “An appropriate response.”  What is this appropriate response and how do we know we’ve got it right? Beyond linear formulas, Dharma teachings point to a natural intelligence that guides us in a spontaneous responsiveness to life….

    Read More

  •

    The Path of Freedom, a Path of Integration.

    Recorded : January 19, 2025

    In order to live a more full and integrated life, we are welcome to acknowledge our strength and our fragility. Our silenced parts, the places that scare us and our shadows, with the right attitude and right view, can serve as a catalyst to our liberation. Holding dear our humanity as well as the liberating…

    Read More