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

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Love for the world

    In our last class of 2017, our guiding teacher Martin offers reflections on life, love and liberation, looking particularly at some of the challenging events and elements of worldly life, and pointing towards a skilful, loving and courageous engagement with the world and everyone in it.

    Read More

  • Stephen Fulder

    From Mindfulness to Dharma: The Fourth Foundation

    The huge popularity of mindfulness is accompanied by a lot of confusion in relation to mindfulness in and of itself and how much it embodies the wider teachings of the Buddha. What is dharma? When, if and how is mindfulness the same as or different from dharma? This topic will be discussed in relation to…

    Read More

  • Death is Before Me Today

    During this Sunday Sangha we will explore the peace of emptiness, the malleability of time and the loving care of oneself and all life.

    Read More

  • Waking down

    Rather than waking up it seems that most of us need to wake down. How can our insights and the awakening process move from being primarily experiential to becoming functional, relational, and lived? In this session Leela explores spiritual practice as a fundamentally earthly practice. How do we awake a presence that does not contract…

    Read More

  • Becoming a Bodhisattva

    This talk will explore the archetype of the Bodhisattva— a being dedicated to waking up and cultivating wisdom and compassion for the sake of all beings. We will first see how it manifests itself in Buddhist history and teachings, and then tackle important questions: How is it relevant to the suffering in our current times?…

    Read More

  • Leslie Booker

    The Delusion of Separateness

    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…

    Read More

  • Willa Blythe Baker

    The Art of Savoring

    In the practice of meditation, we are often focused on the task of getting to the cushion and paying attention, but how much of this task are we actually enjoying? To really enjoy ourselves in meditation, we need a practice that goes beyond attention and mindfulness alone. We need to find joy in the micro…

    Read More

  • Miles Kessler

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Miles Kessler – Week of February 19, 2024

    What is your relationship to fear? When fear arises, is your tendency to collapse into it, or to resist and struggle with it? Or do you deny it? How do you know if you need to face fear with courage, or simply surrender to its inevitability? What does it mean to practice with fear? In this week of Daily Meditations, you are invited to join Miles in an exploration into the human experience of fear, and how it arises in your life, relationships, and practice. You will learn how to work with fear by cultivating courage and surrender, the core qualities of the Spiritual Warrior.

    Read More