Meditation practice trains our capacity to be aware, in real time, of what is happening. But what is colouring your awareness? We can pay very clear and steady attention in a way that is also demanding, defensive or deluded. Or we can give attention in a way that conduces to wisdom, spaciousness, equanimity and kindness.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of January 15, 2024
This week’s theme is “Tending to Fire – An Exploration of the Third Noble Truth”. The third of the four noble truths, which the Buddha offered as a framework, invites us to reflect on ways to tend to the inner fires or urges, which we all experience. ‘Nirodha’ is a concept which invites us to explore ways to handle that fire: to contain it, to create safe space around it and not to fuel it further, so that it eventually expires. This week, we explore concepts like ‘freedom of/from/to’ as well as letting go and letting be.
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Wide Dharma, wide path.
Recorded :
November 13, 2016 Many of us long to experience the Buddhist path in all of our lives, but really only feel its aliveness when we meditate. There’s an incompleteness, a gap, when it comes to our everyday activities and our relationships, where we catch only a whiff of the truths of suffering and the Path. But when we…
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Trust and Surrender: Meeting Life Fully
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November 5, 2023 As we move through life, we meet change, obstacles and beauty, hardships and love, praise and blame, and all the rest of the winds of life. Our question is then how to meet life with a sense of trust in the unknown and find a place where we can meet it all with more ease and…
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The Delusion of Separateness
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October 27, 2019 There seems to be a sense of disorientation, disjointedness and overall running around in circles happening in the world today. And for some reason, many of us think that we’re the only ones who are feeling it; as if it’s our own personal failing. As we move into the changing of seasons, this is the…
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Relational mindfulness: how to stay awake in our daily interactions and relationships.
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October 2, 2016 It is one thing to deepen our practice through silent sitting meditation or on retreat, but how do we bring our practice into the dynamic, messy, and beautiful field of human relationship? What if our daily interactions offer the perfect gateway for awakening? This dharma talk is about letting go of the needless efforting of…
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Post-election trauma: embracing fear, extending love.
Recorded :
November 27, 2016 It has been a distressing and disorienting time for many of us, and to different degrees. Following recent political events in the US and Western Europe our practice is being challenged in new ways. Spurred by a Trump victory, violent attacks on individuals in marginalized groups are on the rise. The three poisons of Greed,…
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Understanding and developing Citta (heart-mind)
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January 28, 2018 All schools of Buddhism acknowledge that the development of Citta is an essential aspect of the awakening process. Within classical Mindfulness teachings, it encompasses the entirely of the third foundation of practice. At its core, it encourages us to recognize the presence and absence of greed, hatred and delusion. In its fruition it points to…
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How Does Meditation Support the Path of Awakening?
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December 15, 2019 Scientists have documented some significant and measurable changes that occur as a result of meditation. But Buddhist practice is not limited to calm, pleasant, relaxing states of meditation. The liberating path includes a broad range of practices that produce a wide variety of benefits. We learn how we encounter the world of the senses; we…
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