Progress in meditation may be slower than we anticipate. Discouragement develops when the comparing mind holds unrealistic expectations, demands perfection, and craves for measurable progress, predictable results, or signposts of success. This talk explores the obstacle of discouragement and its roots in conceit and the comparing mind. To prevent discouragement, we develop skillful ways to uplift the discouraged mind, nurture patience, and trust in the unfolding of the path.
With Shaila Catherine recorded on September 12, 2021.
Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
-
Dharma Practice as Play, or, There is no Path until you Walk It!
Recorded :
September 13, 2020 In our troubled world dharma practitioners sometimes become earnest. But beings learn and develop through play, and to play we have to be fluid in mind, heart and body. Play fertilizes the human spirit and makes us feel a sense of belonging. Welcome to a session exploring dharma practice as original play and creativity.
-
Compassion and equanimity – facing challenges in difficult times
Recorded :
September 4, 2017 Worldwide Insight talk from Joseph Goldstein: “Compassion and Equanimity – Facing Challenges in Difficult Times”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of Jan 9 – 13, 2023
Daily meditations with Martin Aylward.
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christine Kupfer – Week of 30 June, 2025
We’re grateful to have Christine Kupfer guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they support and enrich your practice.
This week’s theme is: Meditating on the Five Elements : A Journey into Interconnectedness
This week, we explore how the classical elements – earth, water, fire, air and space – invite a meeting between our inner landscape and the living world. Each session offers a meditative gesture of presence, revealing that we are never separate: we are the breath, the body, and earth becoming aware of itself.
Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.
-
Cultivating Joy and Responsibility in Extraordinary Times
Recorded :
April 12, 2020 The Coronavirus has given us the most explicit indication of interconnection in recent history. There is a quickening to the inquiry: What distortions is it time to let go of on behalf of the greater good? What becomes possible, through the remembrance of “We consciousness?” How can non-separation inform our way of life and, as…
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Wiebke Pausch – Week of December 4, 2023
This week’s topic is “Exploring the Art of Radical Rest”. Conditioned and surrounded by a restless culture, we are constantly driven towards self-optimisation and self-improvement. Our practice is often affected by the striving and the effort to become a perfect meditator. We will explore together how to rest in the midst of all that is unfinished and imperfect. When we allow ourselves to rest deeply, experience can unfold naturally and we come into contact with the very essence of being alive.
-
The Whole of the Holy Life: Celebrating Buddhist Community on Māgha Pūjā 2567
Recorded :
February 25, 2024 This weekend is the Buddhist full moon ritual known as Māgha Pūjā, one of the three great festival days in the Theravāda Buddhist calendar, also known as “Saṅgha Day,” celebrating the spiritual community. The tradition remembers a day when the first 1,250 arahant (fully awakened) disciples all spontaneously returned from their travels and came together with the…
-
Uncertainty, Stability & Love: Everything Comes With Everything
Recorded :
May 12, 2024 Life is never only good or only bad, pleasant or unpleasant, comfortable or uncomfortable, just or unjust. Cultivating a wide spacious perspective within the reality of uncertainty gives rise to a bigger capacity to meet our lives more gently, kindly, and clearly, with more stability and more love. Join us as we explore perspectives and practices to…