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

  • Daigan Gaither

    Living by Vow

    Recorded : November 1, 2020

    If we start with the understanding that everyone is living by vow, how can we examine what vows we are following and change to follow the ones that lead to liberation?

    Read More

  • Ronya Banks

    Embodied Wisdom: the Fruit of Buddhist Practice

    Recorded : October 3, 2021

    Cultivating embodied wisdom can provide us with lasting equanimity in the face of life’s inevitable ups and downs. During this session, Ronya offers Buddhist practices and frameworks to help us access deep peace and profound contentment for life’s precious journey.

    Read More

  •

    Liberation Now: From the Progressive Path to Direct Experience

    Recorded : December 1, 2019

    In a progressive path approach to practice, we sometimes fall for the idea that liberation is in the future. We are conditioned to believe that we must end thinking, master practices, meditate for years, and purify our minds. Without realizing it, our beliefs can maintain the conditioning that stands in the way of our direct…

    Read More

  •

    Your Most Expensive Resource

    Recorded : September 3, 2023

    There is a substance we need for every meaningful part of our life. We only have a small amount of it, it’s being spent constantly, we can’t get more, and we’re surrounded by predators hungry for it. Attention: every moment we give it to something, and if we don’t choose wisely, a salesperson or an…

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of June 7, 2021

    This week’s theme is: Mudita – Celebrating Aliveness. Our hearts possess infinite capacities: they can express friendship in the most surprising circumstances and turn with tenderness and care to those who suffer. But aside from kindness and compassion, there is also the potential for deep appreciation, ease, delight and joy within us. While such perspectives are always available, the access might be blocked by voices of doubt, shame or negativity. In the upcoming weekly sessions, we strengthen our capacity to find nourishing perspectives and to rejoice in the beauty within and around us with the help of guided meditations and practices for everyday life.

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of June 28, 2021

    This week’s theme is: The Unbound Heart

    Teachings of liberation expand our range of possibilities. They encourage us to discover a broader capacity of what we can contact, sense, and do. The teachings of the pāramīs are a key part of this journey. They act like a map and compass for the heart’s wish to be free of habitual limitations, to be a heart unbound. This week we’ll take a deeper dive into the illimitable qualities of the heart.

    Read More