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

The practice of pleasure and delight (or the spiritual art of having fun).

With Martin Aylward recorded on April 22, 2018.

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

Dharma teachings importantly emphasise suffering, compassion, renunciation, desire, non-reactivity, peacefulness. All these are potent themes, yet ones which can make our practice feel overly heavy, unnecessarily serious, maybe even uptight!

Dharma practice equally points us towards a playful nature, light-heartedness and ease, delight and the capacity to really enjoy life. Especially when we can get bogged down in the circumstantial reality of both our personal struggles and of world affairs, we need uplift for the heart. Joy as resilience. A buoyant heart, that though it may get pushed under, cannot be sunk.

In this class, our founding teacher Martin reflects on ways to cultivate that buoyancy, to explore our capacity for pleasure, to enjoy the gift of life.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of 01 December, 2025

    This week’s theme is: Before Reactivity

    Desire and ill-will very often drive our experience without being noticed. Learning to stay in the space before it arises, no matter how uncomfortable it can be is the entry point that leads to resilience. This week Sophie Boyer invites us to explore some ways to become more familiar with that space and experience the freedom that emerge from it. Resilience as a space of non-reactivity.

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

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of 01 June, 2026

    This week’s theme is: Joy in Practice; gladdening the heart in service of awakening

    Joy, gladness and delight are important factors on the path. They arise as fruits of the practice, but they are also skills that can be cultivated and developed. This week, we will reveal, align with and nourish these liberating qualities. Tasting for ourselves their impact on experience, in service to the wellbeing of all beings.

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

    Read More

  • Norman Blair

    Settling Into Your Body In Meditation

    Finding a comfortable body posture when meditating is a crucial element in our practice. We can use our bodies as a way of experiencing change and impermanence. In this session, we will be looking at ways to make our bodies comfortable for meditation – both standing (if appropriate for your body) and sitting. We will examine various postures and do various techniques that can be helpful for meditating.

    Read More

  • Stephen Fulder

    The Dharma on the front lines: how to work with conflict.

    Peace sometimes feels impossible to find. It is there for a while then something happens and conflict or friction returns. It may be conflict with ourselves, in relationships to people close to us, at our work place, or between social groups. Often we can feel despaired that despite much dharma practice and meditation, conflict keeps…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of March 30

    We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, March 30 Recognizing ourselves as that which can offer blessings out into the world Wednesday, April 1 Being with what…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of June 17, 2024

    This week’s theme is “Preparing the Heart and Mind”. In Buddhist practice we often hear we should let go. And often enough we would really like to let go of those thoughts, impulses, moods and contractions which keep us agitated and in unease. But letting go is rarely something we decide to do; and neither is holding on. In the upcoming week we will explore why the heart-mind holds on to something and how we can prepare, nourish and soothe it, so that letting go becomes a natural process, not a willful command.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of June 15

    We’re fortunate that Martin Aylward has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK this week. To find out more about Martin, and view his other recordings on the platform, click here. Due to temporary circumstances there may be slight delays in uploading this week’s recordings. Thank you for your…

    Read More

  • Christine Kupfer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christine Kupfer – Week of April 10, 2022

    This week’s topic is “Body like a temple”. We often refer to the body as if it were a functional tool. We talk about my body, as if it were supposed to be at our service. Sometimes all it takes is one breath for everything to change, and in a dazzle, we experience body as a temple, a sanctuary for life. What is a temple? It is a sacred place, a place whose spiritual reality goes beyond the physical plane. In our daily meditations this week, we will bow to the miracle of the body that we are, honoring the presence of life unfolding in all its realities.

    Read More