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

Wake up to your Life: Cultivating Courage & Compassion in the Everyday

With Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison recorded on March 23, 2025.

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

Awakening to Life means harmonizing our values and our actions. Many of us merely go through the motions, sleepwalking through the hours, without actually feeling alive. Cultivating courage and joy entails slowing down, paying close attention, and practicing being fully engaged with what each moment has to offer. Koshin Sensei will share Zen teachings and down to earth contemplative practices designed to bring freshness, vitality, and curiosity to everyday life. Whether you are familiar with Zen Buddhism or simply open-minded, you can wake up to your life.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • The Surgeon’s Probe: Healing with Mindfulness

    Vince writes: “I am continuously inspired by some of the images that the Buddha offers us of ‘Sati’ or ‘Mindfulness’. This talk for Worldwide Insight is an exploration of some the many aspects of mindfulness – or in my case a lack of mindfulness – that continue to play themselves out in my life. In…

    Read More

  • Relationship to time.

    Worldwide Insight talk from Christopher Titmuss: “Relationship to Time”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    The 9 Contemplations of Death – Feeling Safe with Impermanence

    In this talk and guided meditation, we turn toward the reality of impermanence with mindfulness and compassion. The Buddhist “Nine Contemplations of Death” invite us to meet our fear and denial with gentleness and honesty, remembering what truly matters. Rather than morbid, this reflection is a doorway into freedom—supporting us to live with integrity, presence,…

    Read More

  • Stephen Fulder

    From Mindfulness to Dharma: The Fourth Foundation

    The huge popularity of mindfulness is accompanied by a lot of confusion in relation to mindfulness in and of itself and how much it embodies the wider teachings of the Buddha. What is dharma? When, if and how is mindfulness the same as or different from dharma? This topic will be discussed in relation to…

    Read More

  • Kate Johnson

    From Freeze to Flow: Transforming Your Fear in the Midst of Pandemic

    Rarely has our inherent interdependence been more exposed than it is right now. As a society, we are depending on one another not only to wash our hands and keep our distance. We are depending on each other to take care of our minds and hearts, to transmit clarity and compassion rather than powerlessness and…

    Read More

  • Kaira Jewel Lingo

    This is, because that is

    “This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This comes to be, because that comes to be. This ceases to be, because that ceases to be.” – The Buddha When conditions are sufficient things manifest. But if there aren’t enough conditions, things cannot yet manifest. How can we skilfully live in…

    Read More

  • Ronya Banks

    Untangling the Tangle

    The Buddha often described our practice in terms of untangling the tangles we find ourselves caught in. Together, let us uncover the primary tangles we get tangled in and how we can use our Buddhist practices to become free from these tangles. “A tangle within, a tangle without, people are entangled in a tangle. Gotama,…

    Read More

  • Chris Willard

    The Joy of Letting Go: Simplicity and Renunciation

    In our consumer culture, we fall for the illusion that more choice-in things, work, people, even spiritual paths-leads to more freedom, when often the opposite is true. As Jack Kornfield says, we live “in an era of unlimited desires but limited resources, when we think it’s the opposite.” More mindful awareness of our consumption isn’t…

    Read More