These pandemic times with isolation, suffering, social and political divisiveness and an uncertain future our lives are filled with even more challenges than usual. At the same time many hearts are opening with increased compassion, connection and possibilities on the horizon. The mind can easily get contracted by the stress or grasping at hope. But our Dharma practice shows us we have a choice how to wisely relate to our experience. This is what we will explore in our time together.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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The Out Breath: Unlocking Concentration
Recorded :
June 16, 2024 Shodo Harada Roshi is known as a “teacher of teachers”, with masters from various lineages coming to sit with him in Japan. If you went to Harada’s monastery, the main meditation technique you’d learn involves slowing the out breath to last one minute. This drastically slows down your physiology, which in turn settles the mind.
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The Dharma on the front lines: how to work with conflict.
Recorded :
February 26, 2017 Peace sometimes feels impossible to find. It is there for a while then something happens and conflict or friction returns. It may be conflict with ourselves, in relationships to people close to us, at our work place, or between social groups. Often we can feel despaired that despite much dharma practice and meditation, conflict keeps…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Shireen Jilla – Week of 29 September, 2025
We’re delighted to have Shireen Jilla guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May her teachings enrich your practice.
This week’s theme is: Equanimity: Balancing at the Centre of the Seesaw of Life
Every morning we will explore a different aspect of equanimity, this inner steadiness, and how we nurture it in our practice. What is this felt sense of spacious ease and how is it a wise check to overwhelming compassion? Actively engaging with our experience, how do we deeply let go? And finally, potently, we will explore equanimity as the gift of grace.
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Let Your Heart Grow Fat With Friendliness: Metta Matters
Recorded :
May 17, 2026 Now is the time to strengthen the heart, to commit every day to doing more good and less harm. Fully engaging life with its inherent joys and sorrows, opportunities and limitations, successes and failures is no small task, and the Dharma offers timeless wisdom and practical guidance for these times. Join us as we take…
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Blunt Suffering
Recorded :
April 29, 2018 Let’s not flinch when we look at the lived experiences of illness, confusion, and relational pain. Let’s allow the texture of hurt to be known. Awareness remains brilliant, for sure. Any of us can experience this. Maybe the more we allow the blunt pain of the body-mind, the more we can sit squarely in awareness….
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christine Kupfer – Week of April 10, 2022
This week’s topic is “Body like a temple”. We often refer to the body as if it were a functional tool. We talk about my body, as if it were supposed to be at our service. Sometimes all it takes is one breath for everything to change, and in a dazzle, we experience body as a temple, a sanctuary for life. What is a temple? It is a sacred place, a place whose spiritual reality goes beyond the physical plane. In our daily meditations this week, we will bow to the miracle of the body that we are, honoring the presence of life unfolding in all its realities.
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Not Knowing is Most Intimate
Recorded :
November 19, 2023 The Buddha spoke often about the danger of clinging to views and opinions. He recommended we avoid clinging, even to the dharma and to “right view.” In a world increasingly torn apart by our adherence to differing viewpoints, how do we navigate the tension between knowing and not knowing? Our exploration will draw from the…
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Patience: In Praise of an Undervalued Helper
Recorded :
December 4, 2022 Patience can be one of those qualities which we think of as being theoretically helpful but feel little motivation to actually cultivate and strengthen. So much emphasis in our busy world of achieving goals and getting tasks done is about doing, taking action and fixing problems. We will spend this session exploring the benefits of…
