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

  • The reality and experience of inner spaciousness

    A sense of spaciousness is needed for inner change but the person of history obstructs the space that is always there. As our practice deepens space starts to replace self images. The more we are embodied and present, timelessness and space become more experientially available to us. The now starts to stretch and become wide…

    Read More

  • Shinzen Young

    How to structure your practice in life

    Shinzen guides you through his “See, Hear, Feel” focus technique. This technique is designed to be applicable in any life situation — driving a car, having a conversation, working out, puttering around the house…. After that he gives a dharma talk describing a systematic procedure for “monasticizing” daily life. The goal of this program is…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Transforming the poisons.

    Buddha points out the three main ways we get pulled into activity and self-contraction – Greed, Hatred and Delusion – which Martin often translates as Desire, Defense and Distraction. This class explores creative ways of meeting these forces in everyday life, and explores powerful reflections for each of the three.

    Read More

  • Fleet Maull

    Neuro-Somatic Mindfulness (NSM): An Integrated Approach to Embodiment, Personal Well-Being, Evolution, & Conscious Awakening

    Roshi Fleet will describe and offer a stack of embodiment practices for building the neural architecture for optimal well-being, psychological and spiritual evolution, and conscious awakening, providing a pathway to a joyful life of meaning and purpose. Specifically he will offer practices for targeting the five neural networks of healing and awakening.

    Read More

  • The Energy of Presence

    This session explores ways that qigong, a Chinese energy cultivation practice, can deepen our embodied presence. There is discussion, intention-led movement and meditation to help ground our awareness, free up blockages and discover ways to open to our natural vitality. All levels of experience and abilities welcome, and options for limited mobility and seated qigong are shared.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Love and Dust: Opening your Heart Wide to a Dying World

    With the fragile condition of our eco-system finally breaking through into the mainstream news cycle, we can easily be overwhelmed by the loss of biodiversity and permafrost, the pollution of earth, air and oceans, and the attendant insecurity and danger to life on earth. We might struggle both with the information itself – the amount,…

    Read More

  • Whole body breathing to regulate your mind and body

    In this session Vidyamala introduces key areas of body awareness where mindful breathing can help to bring about regulation and calm in the body/heart/mind. She calls these the 5 B’s of the breath: Buttocks, Belly, Back, Back of the throat and Brain. She introduces the physiology of these areas and then leads a guided meditation….

    Read More

  • The spectrum of awareness practices

    This session explores different ways in which attention works and associated meditation practices: from focused awareness, to flexible awareness, to natural awareness. We do a number of fun experiential practices in hopes of understanding a variety of ways to meditate and how we can refine our own practice.

    Read More