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

  • Kaira Jewel Lingo

    There is no Way to Peace, Peace is the Way

    As the planet heats up, and hostilities flare between groups and nations, how do we touch and embody the possibility of peace, right here and now? Peace in the future is founded on peace in the present moment. The same is true of justice, and liberation. These are not things we have to wait for…

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of June 28, 2021

    This week’s theme is: The Unbound Heart

    Teachings of liberation expand our range of possibilities. They encourage us to discover a broader capacity of what we can contact, sense, and do. The teachings of the pāramīs are a key part of this journey. They act like a map and compass for the heart’s wish to be free of habitual limitations, to be a heart unbound. This week we’ll take a deeper dive into the illimitable qualities of the heart.

    Read More

  • Roxanne Dault

    Trust and Surrender: Meeting Life Fully

    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…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The Unshakeable Heart: Liberation as the Ultimate Resilience

    Is it possible to live and love freely amidst the greed, aggression and dysfunction of the world?⁠⁠Amidst so much suffering, can you nourish joy, lightness and laughter?⁠⁠When it feels as if you’re drowning, might it be that you are floating in an ocean of blessings?⁠⁠In times of political polarisation and dysfunction, broken societal modelling, a…

    Read More

  • Lisa Ernst

    How to Recharge Your Practice with a Tried and True Inquiry

    Even if you’ve been meditating for years, you probably encounter old patterns that seem impervious to your mindful awareness. Maybe at times these patterns are dormant, but during challenging moments they reappear and perhaps feel intractable. In this session we’ll explore inquiry practices that can help interrupt and disentangle the mind from its habitual “stuck”…

    Read More

  • Wise Resolve: Finding Inner Strength

    In an effort to counter tendencies towards striving and over-achieving, many Western approaches to meditation and spirituality emphasize relaxation. While relaxation and ease are essential ingredients on the meditative path, they must be integrated with whole-hearted effort. How do we find inner strength and make a clear resolve that is informed by wisdom and balanced…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Visions of a free life

    Freedom is a central concern of all our lives, yet has many different manifestations, some of which run completely contrary to others. This class will explores the importance of social freedoms, inner freedom, personal and collective freedoms. We explore how different perspectives on free-ness shape how we practice; and how we understand life and our…

    Read More