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

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of 27 January, 2025

    We’re grateful to have Nathan Glyde guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Time For Life

    Dharma teachings invite a profound reduction in stress. When stress is present, there is a sense of time pressure, urgency, and haste. Conversely, when there is freedom and ease, our perception of time expands in countless ways. Dharma practice can be viewed as methods to significantly alter our sense of time, welcoming us into a well-paced connection that makes time for life.

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

    Read More

  • Suffering and the end of suffering.

    The ancient and radical teachings of the Buddha point to the possibility to be a free, loving and happy human being in the midst of our everyday lives. Oftentimes our stress, dissatisfaction or suffering come not necessarily from the actual things or events themselves, but from our relationship to them. A different way of looking…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Opening to the Joy of Interconnection

    A deeply conditioned habit of the human mind is to experience ourselves as independent and distinct from others and the world that we share. At the heart of Dharma teachings is the invitation to question, inquire into and transform this conditioning of separation, opening us to the joy and possibility of mutuality and interconnectedness. During…

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    The Choice is Ours: Wise Relationship to Our Experience

    These pandemic times with isolation, suffering, social and political divisiveness and an uncertain future our lives are filled with even more challenges than usual. At the same time many hearts are opening with increased compassion, connection and possibilities on the horizon. The mind can easily get contracted by the stress or grasping at hope. But…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of 29 June, 2026

    This week’s theme is: Rejoicing in Integrity: Ethics Beyond Guilt and Shame . In this session we explore how an ethical life can be guided by hiri and ottappa – healthy self-respect and respect for others – rather than by guilt or shame. We will also touch into uplifting emotions such as gratitude, admiration and inner integrity as sources of a joyful, sustainable ethical compass. Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Integrity – A Bridge Over Troubled Water

    In challenging situations, we can lose our ground. Not knowing what to rely on, we are liable to reactivity, either withdrawing or lashing out. Fear and anger are very human reactions to what we perceive as injustice or threat. While there is no need to condemn us for experiencing them, our hearts might yearn for…

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    Insight and practices for difficult times

    We are in a race between fear and consciousness. Never before have forces of greed hatred and ignorance enjoyed such a platform of populist divisiveness that instills fear and separation throughout society, endangering our very civilization. And never before has there been as much caring and worldwide commitment to making this a better world. In…

    Read More