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

Search Sangha Live

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

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of March 29, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Re-Enchanting Our Practice. As much as anything else our practice of mindfulness and meditation can become a habit, and either turn dull, or come with a sense of obligation, work, or duty. In this week together, we will explore ways to bring imagination, embodiment, and intimacy to our practice. After all, meditation is as much a craft as an artform – a chance to discover inner landscapes, hidden mysteries and fascinating insights.

    As much as anything else our practice of mindfulness and meditation can become a habit and either turn dull or come with a sense of obligation, work or duty. In this week together, we will explore ways to bring imagination, embodiment, and intimacy to our practice. After all, meditation is as much a craft as an art form – a chance to discover inner landscapes, hidden mysteries and fascinating insights.

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of 02 June, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Ayala Gill guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.

    This week’s theme is: The Body is a Doorway to Love

    Through relating to the elements of the body, we cultivate a presence that is grounded, awake, open, relaxed and spacious.
    As the body becomes a more stable home for the heart and mind, everything settles and softens back to its natural state of aliveness and love.

    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 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

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of June 26, 2023

    This week’s topic is “Living in Sacredness”. Meditation is more than a practice of being present. The way in which we are present determines whether we reinforce habits of separation, or re-weave the fabric of sacredness. During this week we will explore the sacredness of body, breath, consciousness, emotions and beliefs. Returned to the embrace of sacredness, we plant seeds of Love in a world of separation.

    Read More

  • Wes Nisker

    How to be an Earthling

    Recorded : March 14, 2021

    During this session we will use mindfulness meditation to explore our nature as nature, helping us to become more at ease and accepting of our lives and our place in the scheme of things.

    Read More

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    Let’s Talk about Meditation

    Recorded : November 22, 2019

    This class is an opportunity to explore our meditation practice, on and off the cushions. Meditation can be everything we do. It’s up to us whether we have a life of meditation or a life of daydreaming. Meditation will lead to freedom of your mind and daydreaming will lead to the enslavement of the mind….

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of October 4, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Meeting the Bodily Companion

    Mindfulness of the body is a key aspect of practice. When we’re in contact with our bodies, we root ourselves in the present moment and find refuge from obsessive thinking. These sessions serve a renewal of our relationship with our lifelong companion: the body. Movement, breathing, skilfully applied imagination, etc. will provide creative ways to deepen an embodied way of life. Everybody will be able to join in these gentle but powerful practices. Make sure you have enough space to comfortably stretch your arms to all sides and consider practicing standing or lying down during these sessions, depending on your level of energy.

    Read More