In an effort to counter tendencies towards striving and over-achieving, many Western approaches to meditation and spirituality emphasize relaxation. While relaxation and ease are essential ingredients on the meditative path, they must be integrated with whole-hearted effort. How do we find inner strength and make a clear resolve that is informed by wisdom and balanced with love? We will explore the power of determination in meditation and daily life.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of July 22, 2024
This week’s theme is “Comfort and Discomfort”. Comfort and discomfort can show up in practice, as well as in life. In what ways are they interwoven? What assumptions do we make about them that might hold us back from fully engaging? We’ll explore these ideas through meditation and contemplation, to see what can be learned – and liberated – in support of living and practising more freely and fully.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Jan 23 – 27, 2023
This week’s theme is “5 Doorways to Love”. What hinders our love? Where are we blocked? Desire, anger, dullness, restlessness and doubt are the so-called 5 hindrances: qualities in the mind which obstruct mindfulness and love. At the same time, when we approach them wisely, they can serve as a beautiful guide towards liberation. During this week we will explore the treasures of these qualities for our meditation and our daily life.
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Cultivating Wise Energy
Recorded :
March 6, 2022 Everything we do in life depends on energy, but the modern world has a destructive and exploitative relationship with energy. What is wise, balanced energy in spiritual practice? How can we establish this in the face of societal pressure and norms, and how can it be a resource in our daily life?
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of May 13, 2024
This week’s topic is “Trust the Process”. There is a natural space that is always available to us. A space before thoughts, before duality. Every day there will be an opportunity to come back to this primary experience that is safe and complete. A space before the beginning. This week let’s trust the process together.
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Self and Not-Self: Who (What) are You?
Recorded :
October 25, 2020 This talk explores classic Buddhist teachings about anatta: self and not-self as well highlighting how other traditions and modalities recognized self and what it means to be free from self. We investigate self and not-self through spiritual, poetic cultural and personal perspectives.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of October 23, 2023
This week’s theme is “Touched by Dukkha”. Living life involves being in touch with various experiences, some of which are challenging. These challenging experiences, referred to as ‘dukkha’ by the Buddha, inevitably stir the heart-mind. Our sensitive nature is touched by dukkha, manifesting in ripple effects like impulses, emotions, and thoughts. This week, we’ll explore together what the Buddha called the second noble truth, to understand how our reactions and responses to dukkha shape our lives.
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Dancing with Dukkha and Sukha: Meeting the 10,000 joys and sorrows of our daily lives
Recorded :
May 7, 2023 In this ever-changing landscape of living, the buddha dharma and psychological inquiry offer us skillful ways to pause and soften into the things that bring pain and suffering, while also reminding us to fully embrace the many contentments and connections life also beautifully and innocently offers. In our time together, Sarah will invite us to…
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Dharma, Desire and Eros
Recorded :
May 9, 2021 Eros is life force, the energy that animates our being. Eros fills our spiritual life with vitality, our minds with creativity, our ideas with embodiment and our relating with rich intimacy. To live full lives we need access to eros; without it we become dry, rigid, flacid and withholding. Yet what place does it have…
