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

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of April 27

    We’re fortunate that Kaira Jewel Lingo has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK this week. Links mentioned during these sessions can be found at the bottom of this page. To find out more about Kaira Jewel, and view her other recordings on the platform, click here. Monday, May…

    Read More

  • Martine Batchelor

    What is this?

    In this session Martine leads a guided meditation on the question “What is this?”, and then explores this questioning practice as a means to encounter each moment with awareness and as a means of developing a stable and open heart.

    Read More

  • Fleet Maull

    Neuro-Somatic Mindfulness (NSM): An Accelerated Path for Healing & Awakening

    Roshi Fleet Maull, PhD will offer a brief talk and guide a session of his deeply embodied, neuroscience and trauma-informed approach to classic mindfulness & awareness meditation followed by Q&A. NSM facilitates the transition from self-directed self-regulation to the body’s capacity for auto-regulation, flow, and effortless mindfulness, as well as the shift from witnessing mindfulness to nondual…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of 02 June, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Ayala Gill guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Body is a Doorway to Love

    Through relating to the elements of the body, we cultivate a presence that is grounded, awake, open, relaxed and spacious.
    As the body becomes a more stable home for the heart and mind, everything settles and softens back to its natural state of aliveness and love.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Mark Coleman Profile Photo

    Discovering the Joy of Sensory Awareness: Mindfulness in Nature

    When we turn our attention to the sensory, natural world around us, mindfulness practice can become easeful and expansive. Nature allures awareness through her beauty, and range of dynamic, enchanting experience. In this session we will practice cultivating attention to our sense experience, and discovering joy, peace and wonder in this very moment. Tune in from any peaceful environment outdoors with an internet connection, or indoors, ideally with a view of the outdoors.

    Read More

  • Tuere Sala

    The Supramundane Nature of Emptiness

    Emptiness can be a loaded word for lay practitioners. It can bring up a sense of isolation and annihilation. The dharma of emptiness, however, is a fundamental part of practice. Even in the most mundane tasks of our ordinary lives, we can access emptiness and feel the freedom that comes with it. It’s not about…

    Read More