Not all stress is bad. In fact, anticipatory stress can be a life saver at times. Yet without mindful awareness, anticipatory stress may spiral into reactivity, paralyzing fear and suffering. How do we meet this stress mindfully, use it skilfully, then let go? We will explore practices and approaches to help us awaken to our patterns around anticipatory stress and meet them with compassion and clarity of action.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
-
Compassion is a Political Act
Recorded :
September 20, 2020 This session is invitation for white practitioners and others to join Vimalasara in a discussion on the theme of liberation, the central tenet of Buddhist teachings. No one is liberated until we are all liberated. What if we made explicit that Black Lives Matter was part of the Bodhisattva vow? How would that impact our…
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Jaya Rudgard – Week of 21 April, 2025
We’re delighted to have Jaya Rudgard guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.
This week’s theme is: Still Here, Still Now: Waking Up to Life
As we develop our ability to remain present to experience our insight into the nature of that experience deepens. We’ll continue to explore this week how mindfulness can lead not just to less stress here and now but to the kind of seeing that will eventually free the heart-mind from all its self-created suffering.
Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.
-
Practicing with Varying Viewpoints
Recorded :
November 2, 2025 Because today’s world appears to be reflecting times of great polarization and divisiveness, you probably have felt disturbed after hearing varying viewpoints that do not align with your priorities and values. In fact if you’re like most people, you have most likely felt rather emotionally triggered and incredulous when faced with radically different views. Join…
-
Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Apr 29 – 3 May, 2024
This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.
-
The Power of Self-Compassion
Recorded :
June 11, 2023 Most people are more compassionate toward others than themselves when things go wrong. However, burgeoning research shows that self-compassion is good for everybody. Fortunately, it can be learned. How can we seamlessly bring self-compassion into meditation practice and daily life? What are two secrets about self-compassion practice that make all the difference?
-
Reverence is the Nature of My Love
Recorded :
October 9, 2022 The Diamond Sutra, possibly the oldest text on deep ecology, teaches that there are four notions that separate us from life that we must throw away: the concepts of self, lifespan, humans, and living beings. In this session we will learn practices that enable us to go beyond this limited perception of reality to touch how interconnected with all life we are.
-
Nourishing Compassion
Recorded :
January 9, 2022 His Holiness the Dalai Lama has shared that compassion is not a luxury but a necessity for human beings to survive. There is no more important time to understand and strengthen compassion than right now.
-
Joy as an Act of Resistance & Resilience
Recorded :
November 30, 2025 What brings you joy? How does joy affect you? What is your relationship to joy? Experiencing joys, small and large, helps keep us connected to what is meaningful, nourishing, and enlivening. Come explore the many aspects of dharma joy as an intentional everyday practice, and how it informs and supports not only your own well-being,…
Discussion