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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Embracing Ambiguity: In What we Believe, How we Love and Who we Think we Are
Recorded :
July 7, 2019 “Things are not as they seem, and nor are they otherwise” – Lankavatara Sutra. We easily get seduced by certainty – thinking we really know what we want, what we believe, and who we think we are. Yet Dharma teachings invite us to hold experience lightly, without reducing our knowing to narrow certainty; retaining a…
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Daily Meditation Recordings with Christopher Titmuss- Week of June 10, 2024
This week’s topic is “Letting Go. An Act of the Will?”
We pick up a hot coal in the morning from the wood burner.
Ouch, we let go immediately. No thought. No desire. Instant letting go.
The language of letting go has entered into the mind of the meditator.
It is often not a solution but an ambitious state of mind.
Letting go reveals an outcome of understanding.
We can tell ourselves a 1000 times we should let go and it’s to no avail.
The desire to let go shows we are not ready to let go.
We will explore the preparation for letting go and wise responses employing at times letting go.
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Mindfulness, Samadhi, Insight and Patriarchy: Seeing and Not Seeing Things As They Actually Are
Recorded :
April 23, 2023 When the mind is both bright and still, it sees things that are usually hidden to it. And there are things it does not see. And there can be apprehensions that change everything, and those that change little. Gregory will speak about meditative insight, deep personal and cultural conditioning, and other things about which he…
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Coming Home To The Body with Breath
Recorded :
December 9, 2018 The teachings of the dharma originate from meditation, sitting in zazen, in samadhi. Everything we need to know is in the depths of our being, but we must first come home. One breath at a time, until it is safe for us to turn all feelings back on, and be at home in the body….
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with James Rafael – Week of January 8, 2024
This week’s topic is “New Year Habits and Hindrances”. In this week’s sessions we’ll explore how engaging with the Buddha’s teachings on the ‘5 Hindrances’ can help establish or deepen the habit of a daily meditation practice.
If you’re new to meditation, this framework offers ways to engage with common challenges we may face; “I can’t sit still’, “My mind is just too busy”, “I’m just not sure if this is working”.
If you have a consistent, established practice, revisiting the hindrances can be a gateway to access deeper levels of concentration (samatha), and the subsequent, often profound, insight (vipassana) which follows.
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Relational Dharma
Recorded :
October 23, 2022 What does the Dharma have to say about how we relate: to ourselves, to each other and to the environment? How might we touch in to the energizing potential of waking up together? This session will draw from the inherently relational practices of both the Zen koan tradition and Insight Dialogue to consider ways that…
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Protecting the Mind
Recorded :
April 20, 2025 The encounter with sensory experiences can lead to insight and calm, or reactivity and suffering. How do you guard your mind in the midst of a daily barrage of sensory input? How do you protect your mind so that tranquility and wisdom will be well established? The Buddha encouraged restraint of the senses, but this…
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The nature of experience. Part 3: Non Self Existence.
Recorded :
January 29, 2017 Today’s session is the third in a special run of three consecutive sessions with Martin, where he looks deeply at the nature of experience through Buddha’s profound descriptions of reality – Impermanence, Emptiness, Non self-existence. The classes point directly to how these themes can come alive in our practice and understanding, looking at the personal,…
