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

The freeing of human consciousness: from seeing the world ‘out there’, separate and alien, to directly knowing, feeling, and living the intimacy of all things

With Thanissara recorded on February 18, 2018.

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

The Shurangama Sutra, which points out the foundations of Zen practice, discusses the essential nature of mind as the “primal essence of consciousness that brings forth all conditions.” Implied is the heart-mind (citta) both profoundly intimate with all things while at the same time free and independent of all things. How is it to live this paradox as we move within an unbearable evolutionary crisis polarized between human driven destruction and human inspired renewal?

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • An Experience is Not The Point

    A deep application of attention includes the sustained application to any important experience. This includes a vast range of happy or painful, spiritual or conventional experiences. There is the view of the experience and the experience. What is a fresh way to see an important experience? Does the view of the experience matter more than…

    Read More

  • Cultivating Wise Energy

    Everything we do in life depends on energy, but the modern world has a destructive and exploitative relationship with energy. What is wise, balanced energy in spiritual practice? How can we establish this in the face of societal pressure and norms, and how can it be a resource in our daily life?

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    Changing the Channel: Opening to Goodness

    The barrage of frightening headlines often leaves us with feelings of despair, hopelessness, and negativity. While it’s important to feel connected to the suffering all around us, it is equally important to nourish ourselves by opening to the goodness in life–both inside and around us. Our caring can then be held with more spaciousness and…

    Read More

  • Yahel Avigur

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Yahel Avigur – Week of 14 July, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Yahel Avigur guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions enrich and support your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Metta — Healing All Aspects

    This week, we’ll open to the healing power of metta – loving-kindness, or goodwill – as a transformative force in our lives. We’ll practice offering this gentle warmth first to those we naturally care about, and to ourselves. Gradually, we’ll widen the circle, allowing metta to infuse our relationships with neutral people, those we find difficult, and ultimately all beings. As kindness suffuses more corners of our hearts and lives, we may begin to discover a growing sense of spaciousness and connection – and with it, insight, balance, and inner freedom.

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

    Read More

  • Wes Nisker

    How to be an Earthling

    During this session we will use mindfulness meditation to explore our nature as nature, helping us to become more at ease and accepting of our lives and our place in the scheme of things.

    Read More

  • Jaya Julienne Ashmore

    When Less is More

    Gautam Buddha said he gained nothing from complete awakening. What are our everyday experiences of the magic of less? Trying less does not mean less energy, connection or insight. How little effort is needed to hear a sound or to feel the ground? Simply listening to a friend with ease and no answers can leave…

    Read More