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

Search Sangha Live

The Paradox of Being: Alive & Aware

With Eugene Cash recorded on February 17, 2019.

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

“The World is its Own Magic” – Suzuki Roshi

As we practice and our understanding deepens, we’re often surprised by paradox. We begin to discover what the Laṅkāvatāra Sutra pointed to: Things are not what they seem… Nor are they otherwise. We intuitively know that there is more to life/reality then the usual, the familiar and the ordinary. Part of what draws us to spirituality is an inherent understand that this ordinary reality is true and it is the ground of the extraordinary. We’ll look, examine, and see what we experience and what’s experiencing our experience as we practice together. It might be possible to see if when we’re present and aware, life is its own magic.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • The ultimate relationship: opening to love.

    Recorded : February 19, 2017

    We are deeply conditioned to look for love outside ourselves. In that desperate search, we not only experience the frustration and the futility of grasping, but we lose sight of who we authentically are. Join us as we engage in practices that not only remind us of our true nature, but guide us to a…

    Read More

  • 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

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of September 19, 2022

    This week’s topic is “Compose Yourself”. Dharma teachings appear to pull ‘us’ in two directions: on the one hand we pacify, renouncing and let go of everything, even of ourselves; on the other we energise, expanding our being into interconnection, to extend a limitless, inclusive welcome to all everywhere. But in actuality, we discover that there is no contradiction with this mismatch. For the well-composed practitioner, expanding goodwill and liberating release harmoniously and melodically intertwine.

    Read More

  • Ayya Santussika

    Choices – The Ones that Matter and the Ones that Don’t

    Recorded : July 28, 2019

    How many choices will you make today? Which ones are likely to lead to happiness and which to suffering? Often we have many more options than we think we do. The Buddha’s teachings offer clear guidance on how to make choices that help us develop our habits, our character, and our karma in a way…

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of July 10, 2023

    This week’s theme is “The Compassionate Heart”. Karuna, usually translated as compassion, is our hearts’ ability to relate with care towards ourselves, others and experience in general. Living in a complex world with imperfect others and self, an attitude and practice of compassion can be an immense support. But when misunderstood, it can equally turn into pity, generate overwhelm, make us lose balance and create friction with the concept of responsibility. We will therefore dedicate this upcoming week to an indepth exploration into the concept of compassion.

    Read More

  • Wiebke Pausch

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Wiebke Pausch – Week of October 31, 2022

    This week’s topic is “Awaken Self-Compassion”. For many of us it is easier to be friendly and compassionate with others than with ourselves. Old conditioning, limiting beliefs of not being worthy of love and are confining our hearts. Compassion is an essential part of our true nature. We all know how to be gentle and compassionate with ourselves – this is how we survived situations of suffering and loss in our lives. This week we will be exploring how to awaken Self-Compassion, allowing our hearts to soften and open with care. With a tender heart we begin naturally to respond to the world around us with clarity and compassion.

    Read More

  • Justine Dawson

    Comfortable with Discomfort: How to be a Bodhisattva

    Recorded : May 10, 2020

    Our current situation is giving us great practice with discomfort. whether we’re experiencing small inconveniences or significant disruption. Dharma teaches us that this very discomfort is a gateway to realization. Once our efforts to soothe or transcend run dry, we gain the opportunity to develop insight, freedom, and true bodhisattva compassion. Compassion that is at…

    Read More