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

The Radical Heart

With Thanissara recorded on May 19, 2019.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

It’s hard to find the words that do justice to the enormity of the heartbreak we are in. As we wake up to our new reality, we feel grief, fear, outrage, and a daily kaleidoscope of reactions as we witness the dying of our beautiful planet.

Our Dharma practice is for this, to meet reality. To know peace and equanimity, even in the midst of a world on fire, and to have the ability to turn pain to strength, confusion to clarity and overwhelm to focus. As we practice a deeper listening, we begin to find an enduring, free heart that can love, regardless, within an authentic and increasingly radical response.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • The Happiness of a Liberated Heart

    What is pleasure and what is happiness? Why is my pursuit of happiness not working? Is there any lasting happiness? Together we inquire into the nature of happiness. We reflect on different attempts in our lives to find happiness and what stops us from being contented. Inspired by the Buddha’s own quest for a genuine…

    Read More

  • Muditā: Appreciative Joy

    Of the four traditional heart qualities in Buddhism, appreciative joy – muditā – gets less attention than lovingkindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), or equanimity (upekkhā). But the cultivation of sincere joy at the success of another greatly enriches our well-being and happiness. We will explore this powerful form of joy together, as well as what blocks…

    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

  • An Experience is Not The Point

    A deep application of attention includes the sustained application to any important experience. This includes a vast range of happy or painful, spiritual or conventional experiences. There is the view of the experience and the experience. What is a fresh way to see an important experience? Does the view of the experience matter more than…

    Read More

  • The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love

    When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion. When we know ourselves as a whole which subsumes everything, we cease to diminish or dismiss the mystery of being human….

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    Equanimity: Finding Balance in Uncertain Times

    Equanimity is a highly-valued quality in Buddhist teachings. But what is it, and how do we cultivate it in our meditation practice? How can we access equanimity in daily life, especially in the midst of uncertainty, fear, and sadness over the suffering in the world? Howard Zinn from “The Optimism of Uncertainty”To be hopeful in…

    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