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

The Gratification, The Danger and The Escape

With Dave Smith recorded on September 23, 2018.

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

The triad of gratification, danger, and escape is one of the Buddha’s most concise and simple teachings for investigating everyday lived experience. This formula can be applied to every single aspect of our experience. Many Buddhist scholars point out that this teaching contains the earliest roots of what we have come to know as the four noble truths, the basic framework for all Buddhist traditions.

During this session Dave outlines the teaching and its implications from the early Buddhist tradition. He also offers some basic tools and tips for how this teaching can be applied to all areas of our lives, on and off the cushion. Cultivating a liberation-based lifestyle in the tragic, yet beautiful complexity of the modern world.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    With a generous spirit: your money and your life.

    We often hear about Dana, or generosity, only when being asked for donations! Yet Buddha taught that “the practice of generosity is a foundation for happiness”. This session with Worldwide Insight guiding teacher Martin Aylward explores the depth and beauty of generosity, and how its practice can transform our own hearts and minds.

    Read More

  • Christelle Bonneau

    The First Duty of Love is to Listen

    What is meditation and everyday life mindfulness practice but listening? True listening is neutral, non-judgemental, welcoming and silent. It’s a window to a larger vision and freedom, which gets us out of the narrow jail of self and creates an intimacy with life in which we feel more alive and loving. Join Christelle to explore…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Jaya Rudgard – Week of 21 April, 2025

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

    This week’s theme is: Still Here, Still Now: Waking Up to Life

    As we develop our ability to remain present to experience our insight into the nature of that experience deepens. We’ll continue to explore this week how mindfulness can lead not just to less stress here and now but to the kind of seeing that will eventually free the heart-mind from all its self-created suffering.

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

    Read More

  • Soothing Anxiety

    Anxiety is a completely normal, natural human emotion. Anxiety can be rooted in circumstances related to one’s personal life, relationships, or larger issues affecting our society and planet. Regardless of the source, many suffer from intense, frequent or chronic forms of anxiety. What does spirituality and contemplative practice have to teach us about how to…

    Read More