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

The Conscientious Heart: An exploration of Appamada and the Elephant’s Footprint

With Roshi Joan Halifax recorded on March 3, 2024.

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

We will explore through practice and teachings the importance of “appamada” or heedfulness, conscientiousness, or what Stephen Batchelor has translated as care. Appamada has been called the path to the deathless. ” Just as the footprints of all living beings with legs can be encompassed by the footprint of the elephant, and the elephant’s footprint is declared to be supreme among them in terms of its great size; in the same way, heedfulness is the one quality that keeps both kinds of benefits secure—benefits in this life & benefits in lives to come.” We actualize this blessed path.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Shaila Catherine

    Protecting the Mind

    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…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Leela Sarti – Week of April 26, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Timeless presence in the midst of daily life.

    This week we will invite the possibility of being grounded in the depth of timeless presence in the midst of daily life. We will practice and inquire how to live a full and heartfelt life from silence and emptiness, and yet being yourself in peace with others, and doing what needs to be done.

    Read More

  • The nature and practice of right view.

    If there is one practice that defines the quality of the Buddha’s teachings, it is right view. This is a wisdom path. Right view is the beginning and ending of the path. Right view comes first among the eight path factors because it is needed for the entire path. Right view can be described as…

    Read More

  • The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love

    When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion. When we know ourselves as a whole which subsumes everything, we cease to diminish or dismiss the mystery of being human….

    Read More

  • Eugene Cash

    Not Clinging to Anything in the World

    These words, spoken by the Buddha in the Satipatthana Sutta, point us to the potential for awakening inherent in mindfulness practice. Even now, in the midst of the pandemic of Covid-19, we can explore what it means to live a life of love, commitment and authenticity as we discover the freedom of not clinging to…

    Read More

  • Vinny Ferraro

    Coming home to love.

    In this session we look at the strategy of withholding love from ourselves and does it really work? Then we explore the practice of arrival, and what does it really mean to come home?

    Read More

  • Lisa Ernst

    Exploring Karma, Choice and the Mind

    Karma is action in Buddhism, driven by intention. With practice we cultivate the ability to choose our response and our actions, internally and externally. We might think if our intentions are good our actions will follow, but our intentions are often under the influence of strong conditioning that prevents us from living our choices. But…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of May 8, 2023

    This week’s theme is “Shedding Light on Darkness”. In the Buddhist tradition, we find three psycho-physical dynamics which bring together suffering, stress and dissatisfaction. Beside aggression and wanting, the root of moha, often translated as ignorance, delusion or blindness, can be tricky to understand and practice. What are we blind to? What do we need to see and understand? How can we potentially see our blind spots? How can we prepare ourselves for that which we might discover? We dedicate this week of practice to discovering the different aspects of ignorance and learn practical steps to look deeply yet with kind eyes.

    Read More