Rather than waking up it seems that most of us need to wake down. How can our insights and the awakening process move from being primarily experiential to becoming functional, relational, and lived? In this session Leela explores spiritual practice as a fundamentally earthly practice. How do we awake a presence that does not contract in contact with experience? It is an invitation to explore what it means to awaken a belly presence that makes us truly embodied and that potentially embraces and integrates our instinctual nature: our social, sexual and survival drive.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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Trust and confidence: one of the five great spiritual powers
Recorded :
June 11, 2017 Trust is like pouring oil on troubled waters; it smooths the way. We don’t need to take so much trouble to build our walls. We can let go and let life sweep through us. It is one of the five powers (Bala) along with energy, mindfulness, serenity and wisdom.
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From Freeze to Flow: Transforming Your Fear in the Midst of Pandemic
Recorded :
March 29, 2020 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…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of Sept 12, 2022
This week’s topic is (Be)Come As You Are. Our driven-ness, our ruminating thoughts, and our feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety never allow us to simply ‘be’. They evolve around a sense of identity , a process the Buddha called selfing (bhava), a form of suffering (dukkha). We are endlessly trapped in a narrative of who we think we ought to be, were in the past and should be in the future.
We will dedicate our shared time together to build an awareness of these processes and find alternative ways to relate to the many experiences of life.
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Natural Wisdom
Recorded :
July 5, 2020 In the modern world, it’s easy to forget our intimate connection with all of life. But with recent global events and movements, we’ve been both confronted and inspired by the deep impact our actions have on one another. From a Buddhist perspective, being aware is our true nature. What role might the natural world play…
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The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love
Recorded :
October 7, 2018 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….
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Martin Aylward – Week of March 30
We’re fortunate that Martin Aywlard has generously offered to lead our daily meditation sessions for Europe and the UK. To find out more about Martin, and to view his other contributions to Sangha Live, click here. Monday, March 30 Being in the body Wednesday, April 1 The elements of bodily life Friday, April 3 Being…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 17 March, 2025
We are delighted to have Nirmala Werner guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. This week’s theme is: Sacred Body, Sacred Path: Feminine Principles on the Spiritual Journey. This week, we explore the profound role of the feminine principle on the spiritual journey in Buddhism. We will engage in embodied practices, examining the qualities of the elements and nature, while opening ourselves to what truly serves us on our path to awakening. Where does our practice lead us when we open to an embrace of life, seeing all experience as sacred?
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Blunt Suffering
Recorded :
April 29, 2018 Let’s not flinch when we look at the lived experiences of illness, confusion, and relational pain. Let’s allow the texture of hurt to be known. Awareness remains brilliant, for sure. Any of us can experience this. Maybe the more we allow the blunt pain of the body-mind, the more we can sit squarely in awareness….
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