Click here to join our daily meditations to support establishing a regular sitting practice.

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

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Ulla Koenig

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of January 17, 2022

    This week’s theme is: Embracing Anger.

    How do you deal with your feelings of anger?

    Is it okay to be angry at times or do we need to get rid of it once and for all?

    Meeting our anger can be a challenge, as it comes with a driving energy and tends to evoke reactions of blame, fear or delight within us. The Buddha encouraged us to familiarize ourselves with all expressions of the heart-mind but equally warned about the destructive forces of ill-will. Let us look deeply into the nature of anger and learn ways to channel it in skilful and liberating ways.

    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

  •

    The Gratification, The Danger and The Escape

    Recorded : September 23, 2018

    The triad of gratification, danger, and escape is one of the Buddha’s most concise and simple teachings for investigating everyday lived experience. This formula can be applied to every single aspect of our experience. Many Buddhist scholars point out that this teaching contains the earliest roots of what we have come to know as the…

    Read More

  • Tara Brach

    Self-compassion.

    Recorded : June 7, 2015

    Worldwide Insight talk from Tara Brach: “Self-Compassion”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.

    Read More

  • Nina la Rosa

    Freedom through focusing in.

    Recorded : September 25, 2016

    Before this live session, Nina wrote: “I want to share a mindfulness technique this Sunday that’s particularly alive in my life right now. As a new mother I’ve experienced an increase in planning, anticipating, worrying, and fear. Before the birth of my daughter a few months ago I read a book by Karen Maezen Miller,…

    Read More

  •

    Mindfulness and the Four Noble Truths

    Recorded : July 16, 2023

    Across all Buddhist lineages and traditions, the four noble truths hold the utmost importance. They are the Dharma’s most fundamental teaching. In modern society, the focus of Buddhism often shifts to meditation, particularly mindfulness, as the practice continues to be integrated into contemporary culture. How can we bring the teachings of the four noble truths…

    Read More

  • Thanissara

    Surrendering the Clever Mind into the Listening Heart

    Recorded : February 14, 2021

    As our deepening poly-crises shift us from a sense of predictability, stability, and even a future, into crisis management as a daily norm, how can our practice support inner resilience and a meaningful response? We will touch on Dharma practices and teachings that support the internal shifts needed as we transition from over-reliance on separative…

    Read More

  • Profile Photo Of Christopher Titmuss

    Who Am I?

    Recorded : March 10, 2019

    “Who Am I?” is a fundamental question. You have to live the question, day in and day out. You cannot think through an answer. The self (‘I’ and ‘my’) lands on objects, voluntarily or involuntarily. Primary objects of interest include forms, feelings, perceptions, formations of mind/speech/body and consciousness (mindfulness, awareness, concentration and meditation). The self…

    Read More