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.
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This is, because that is
Recorded :
October 29, 2017 “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…
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Saddha: Unshakeable Confidence
Recorded :
January 8, 2023 So many of us feel assailed by doubt, anxiety and insecurity. Unhelpful self-talk, along with the uncertainties of the world, heighten and reinforce thought tendencies. Dharma practice helps us recognize and uproot ingrained patterns, and also to establish trust, confidence and fearlessness. Our first Sunday Sangha of 2023 will inquire into what is deeply trustworthy, and point towards a confidence that is unshakeable — regardless of circumstance or preference, life or death.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with James Rafael – Week of January 8, 2024
This week’s topic is “New Year Habits and Hindrances”. In this week’s sessions we’ll explore how engaging with the Buddha’s teachings on the ‘5 Hindrances’ can help establish or deepen the habit of a daily meditation practice.
If you’re new to meditation, this framework offers ways to engage with common challenges we may face; “I can’t sit still’, “My mind is just too busy”, “I’m just not sure if this is working”.
If you have a consistent, established practice, revisiting the hindrances can be a gateway to access deeper levels of concentration (samatha), and the subsequent, often profound, insight (vipassana) which follows.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of September 5, 2022
This week’s topic is “Awakening into Experience Here and Now”. “You shouldn’t chase after the past
or place expectations on the future.
What is past
is left behind.
The future
is as yet unreached.
Whatever quality is present
you clearly see right there,
right there.
Not taken in,
unshaken,
that’s how you develop the heart.” (MN 131)The essence of the Buddha’s teachings lies in these words. Unshakability and freedom are at the heart of awakening, they are what we cultivate in our practice. This week we will practice turning to our experience in ways that wake us up, right here and now.
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The Thing You Can Count On
Recorded :
January 23, 2022 In times like these with so much uncertainty, fear and suffering, how can we keep our center in a world that sometimes seems to be spinning out of control?
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Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out
Recorded :
May 20, 2018 Racism remains one of the most rooted and painful impasses of our time. Why is this so? And what does this have to do with you? In her talk, drawing from her recent publication, Ruth explores an understanding of our individual and collective racial conditioning and its social proliferation, and how mindfulness provides a foundation…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Caverly Morgan – Week of July 13
We’re very grateful to have Caverly Morgan hosting our Daily Meditation Series for North America. To find out more about Caverly, and to view her past recordings and contributions to Sangha Live, click here.
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Dharma practice as a path of happiness.
Recorded :
March 1, 2015 Worldwide Insight talk from James Baraz: “Dharma Practice as a Path of Happiness”. Guided meditation, Dharma talk and Q&A.
Discussion