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

The Dharma of Homecoming in Times of Fear

With Lama Rod Owens recorded on July 26, 2020.

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

Maya Angelou once wrote: “The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” James Baldwin reflected: “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” In The Wiz, Stephanie Mills sang: “When I think of home I think of place where there’s love overflowing.”

No matter how we think of home, it is a place that many of us need. The needing of a place called home is the needing to be in a place where we are safe and taken care of. Home is the experience of taking refuge in something that restores us through love. Homecoming is opening to how home is calling us into being held and cared for.

In this teaching, we will be moving through mindfulness practice, heart based practices, pranayama (energy breath practice), and benefactor practice to explore the profound path of homecoming in these times of fear and uncertainty.

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

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Awakening from fear.

    We need not avoid fear. Fear belongs to the illusion of a self that is separate from life. It is the byproduct of identifying with that illusion. Often, fear arises in the very moment that our awareness practices are bringing us closer to a direct experience of who we authentically are. For this reason, in…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of Jan 16, 2023

    This week’s theme is “Change, Loss and Dying: Meeting the Common Denominator”. When we come in touch with the fragility of our existence, it is only natural that fear or sadness might well up. The constant inward and outward change contrasts with our lack of control. To experience change, loss and death, is a substantial challenge for all of us. The Buddha did not shy away from these common human denominators, but offered perspectives and practices which allow us to meet them with compassion, while enabling the heart to rest in love and peacefulness.

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of July 17, 2023

    This week’s topic is “Deepening and Developing Unconditional Friendliness”. Metta, translated as unconditional friendliness, is a powerful and transformative attitude. When we relate to ourselves, others and experience with metta, reactivity and ill being dissolve and wisdom and wellbeing grow. During this week of practice we will deepen the practice and application of metta, as well as the understanding of how it impacts experience.

    Read More

  • Meditating and speaking: simultaneously practicing Sila, Samadhi and Panna

    The communicative loop of listening and speaking forms a powerful karmic workshop. Language taps into our karmic archive, sankhara. It reaches other people and, if they are listening, there is mind-to-mind contact. Relational contact is intrinsically powerful because humans are intrinsically relational: when we engage together, our mutual responsiveness amplifies our efforts. Speaking and listening…

    Read More