Emptiness can be a loaded word for lay practitioners. It can bring up a sense of isolation and annihilation. The dharma of emptiness, however, is a fundamental part of practice. Even in the most mundane tasks of our ordinary lives, we can access emptiness and feel the freedom that comes with it. It’s not about how long you’ve practiced, it’s more about your level of sincerity in the moment.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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You Are NOT Doomed: Breaking & Replacing Old Patterns
Recorded :
March 26, 2023 You may have noticed that sometimes breaking old patterns is hard to do! But thanks to surviving ancient Buddhist teachings, we are NOT doomed to being stuck in the rut of the same old painful behavioral and cognitive patterns, and we can create new helpful patterns. This talk explores the nature of the conditioned mind…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of May 1, 2023
This week’s topic is “A Path of Wisdom and Compassion”. Practicing Insight Meditation supports an understanding of how wellbeing is nourished, and how ill-being is conditioned. Attending to our own heart and mind with compassion and wisdom opens possibilities of freedom. Over this week of practice, we’ll develop wisdom and compassion, exploring creative responses to habits that appear to obscure these beautiful qualities.
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Light on the path: pleasure, joy, fulfilment and free-ness.
Recorded :
September 24, 2017 Our founding and guiding teacher Martin Aylward reflects on the importance of being nourished and uplifted by our practice. He looks at the nature of happiness and our sometimes difficult relationship with pleasure; explore opening up to joy, and point to ways in which dharma practice is fulfilling and freeing.
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Practicing the Middle Way: Navigating Between Extremes
Recorded :
May 14, 2023 The Buddha invites us to travel the Middle Path, between extremes. How do we navigate this path that leads to knowledge, understanding and liberation? We practice with mindfulness and kindness to meet our day to day experiences and our conditioning: societal, familial, cultural, and historical. Inviting in curiosity and diligence, we learn to practice to…
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Our sensitivity is our greatest strength.
Recorded :
November 20, 2016 Being human is an inevitably vulnerable experience. The challenge lies in being taught that there is something wrong with us for feeling as sensitive and vulnerable as we do, We learn to cover up or numb out our sensitivity.Practice teaches us to turn towards, rather than away, from vulnerability, and allow it to affirm the…
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Clarity, Presence and Love: Both on and off the Cushion
Recorded :
October 19, 2025 How to meet the world’s joys and crises, alongside our deepening practice? Learn from the examples of Buddhist teachers and activists who engage with the world and create change from the presence, clarity and love of a dedicated dharma practice. Portraits of people and organisations:Dr A. T. Ariyaratne (1931 – 2024) and the Sarvodaya movementJoe…
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Forgiveness: The Practice of Returning to Love
Recorded :
September 14, 2025 A heart rooted in compassion longs to uplift and free all beings. Yet holding such a heart is not always easy. We stumble, we protect, we carry wounds. In our time together, we’ll explore forgiveness as an act of self-compassion-a way to meet our own suffering with kindness, and to restore the dignity that pain…
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Daily Meditation Recordings with Christopher Titmuss- Week of June 10, 2024
This week’s topic is “Letting Go. An Act of the Will?”
We pick up a hot coal in the morning from the wood burner.
Ouch, we let go immediately. No thought. No desire. Instant letting go.
The language of letting go has entered into the mind of the meditator.
It is often not a solution but an ambitious state of mind.
Letting go reveals an outcome of understanding.
We can tell ourselves a 1000 times we should let go and it’s to no avail.
The desire to let go shows we are not ready to let go.
We will explore the preparation for letting go and wise responses employing at times letting go.
Discussion