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
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The practice of pleasure and delight (or the spiritual art of having fun).
Recorded :
April 22, 2018 Dharma teachings importantly emphasise suffering, compassion, renunciation, desire, non-reactivity, peacefulness. All these are potent themes, yet ones which can make our practice feel overly heavy, unnecessarily serious, maybe even uptight! Dharma practice equally points us towards a playful nature, light-heartedness and ease, delight and the capacity to really enjoy life. Especially when we can get…
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Consuming the Chaos: Exploring Surviving Suffering in a World of Suffering
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March 28, 2021 Buddhadharma is a system of profound wisdom that helps us to tell the truth about our lives. It helps us to consume the chaos of the world we are struggling through by reminding us of the spaciousness that is always inherently present in and around anything we experience as suffering. When we connect to this…
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Embodying cultural diversity: dancing with the basket of virtue
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July 2, 2017 Our Sangha has been predominately white since it branched off from the Asian countries. This Dharma talk offers a path for deeper inquiry and greater insight into how we can embody cultural diversity. The Eight Noble Truths will guide us toward a healthier way of conducting ourselves in the arena of cultural diversity, taking a…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Christine Kupfer – Week of 15 September, 2025
We’re delighted to have Christine Kupfer guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and enrich your practice.
This week’s theme is: Equanimity – A Still Heart Amid the Waves
A living balance of the heart welcomes both joy and storm. This week, from the ground of presence we open to the full tapestry of experience. Through meditation, reflection, and silence, we return to the quiet heart, where openness and steadiness meet, tasting freedom that is deeper than reactivity.
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The Dharma and the Drama of Sex: Everything you Wanted to know about Dharma and Sex but were too Spiritual to Ask
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November 18, 2018 Sex is everywhere. It’s how we got born, it teases us from advertising boards on every city street, it drives some of the biggest industries, and it provokes some of the most intense stimuli in body, heart and mind. Yet dharma teachings, even in a lay context, mostly ignore sex. It is not spoken about…
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Relief – In This Very Moment, In This Very Breath
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April 21, 2019 Practicing mindfulness together with the four Divine Abidings (loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity), we develop our ability to bring relief to even the most challenging moments of our lives. We begin by strengthening our habit to increase our mindfulness as stress increases and then apply the Divine Abiding that is most appropriate for a…
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Human Body – Earth Body – One Body
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May 10, 2026 The Earth speaks to us through our bodies. By contemplating the elements we come to understand that all life on Earth is simply interbeing. Through this sensed understanding we begin to transform human supremacy into human response-ability, a deepening of our inborn capacity for a healthy regenerative relationship with ourselves and our world. Quote: The…
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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.
Discussion