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

Search Sangha Live

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

  • Jill Satterfield

    Awareness Shift: Knowing the Nature of the Body, Heart/Mind through the 5 Elements

    Recorded : February 27, 2022

    Sometimes a simple shift of our perception can change our sense of everything and allow for a fresh experience of the personal and transpersonal simultaneously. There is so much more ease in a relaxed, open view. By widening our awareness aperture and somatically exploring our composition, we revisit connection. Sensing the organic arising and passing of…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of July 5, 2021

    This week’s theme is: The Power of Compassion.

    Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. – Dalai Lama

    During this week we will explore how compassion informs and supports meditation practice and the deepening of understanding and wisdom. We will practice and inquire into different aspects of this powerful attitude and intention and taste for ourselves the impact it has on ourselves and the world.

    Read More

  •

    Glimpse of Being

    Recorded : July 11, 2021

    There are many ways to practice mindfulness, from the focused and deliberate to the expansive and relaxed. In this session, Diana teaches about natural awareness, which is a wide open, spacious, effortless awareness of awareness. Learn simple meditative shifts and ‘Glimpse Practices’ to connect with our radiant awareness and the innate capacity we all have…

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of May 9, 2022

    This week’s topic is Disentangle the Net of Needs. We all have needs. Existential needs, needs for safety, connection, spirituality and much more. Our attitude towards needs, what strategies we choose to meet them and what boundaries we set in place determines to a large extent our happiness and peace of mind. In this week we want to explore skilful ways to handle our needs, feelings and boundaries. We will draw from Buddhist teachings, mindful practices and elements of non-violent communication to support us in our daily lives.

    Read More

  •

    Surrendering the Clever Mind into the Listening Heart

    Recorded : February 14, 2021

    As our deepening poly-crises shift us from a sense of predictability, stability, and even a future, into crisis management as a daily norm, how can our practice support inner resilience and a meaningful response? We will touch on Dharma practices and teachings that support the internal shifts needed as we transition from over-reliance on separative…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of 31 March, 2025

    We’re delighted that Zohar Lavie will be leading our Daily Meditation sessions this week. We hope they bring depth and joy to your practice.

    This week’s theme is: A Compassionate Response

    As sensitive beings, we are impacted by the conditions of our lives. Having a body, heart and mind means meeting painful and challenging circumstances, whether in our immediate environment or in the world. During this week we will explore possibilities of responding with and through compassion to whatever is arising in our lives. Attuning as we do so to further wellbeing for all beings.

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

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of 4 March, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Wide and Deep: an Integrated Practice in Meditation and in Life”. This week at Sangha live, the morning meditations with Martin will draw each day on elements of dharma practice and understanding that can be both cultivated in meditation, and applied in daily activity. We’ll encourage a steady participation in the mornings through the week, and reflect on using the daily themes to explore our habits, beliefs and reactions throughout each day.

    Read More