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.
With Lisa Ernst recorded on July 17, 2022.
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The Compass of Wise Intention
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September 21, 2025 In times marked socially by uncertainty, injustice, polarization, and sometimes overwhelm, in the midst of the typical personal joys and sorrows of our day to day experiences, it can be difficult to know how to act-or even how to keep the heart steady. The Buddha’s teaching on Wise Intention (sammā saṅkappa) offers a compass, a…
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Trusting Impermanence
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April 16, 2023 ‘All things fall apart’ was the Buddha’s last teaching before passing away. How can we live peacefully with this universal and challenging truth? In this session, we’ll practice how attuning to change supports letting go.
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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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The freeing of human consciousness: from seeing the world ‘out there’, separate and alien, to directly knowing, feeling, and living the intimacy of all things
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February 18, 2018 The Shurangama Sutra, which points out the foundations of Zen practice, discusses the essential nature of mind as the “primal essence of consciousness that brings forth all conditions.” Implied is the heart-mind (citta) both profoundly intimate with all things while at the same time free and independent of all things. How is it to live…
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Living From a Sense of Call and Response
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November 26, 2023 Deep listening goes beyond merely using our ears; it encompasses engaging our eyes, hearts, and bodies as well. As practitioners of meditation, we can also learn to listen with mindful awareness. In this session, we will explore how call and response, a musical concept, also applies to meditation and our daily interactions. Join us, and…
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Change the story, change your life
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June 25, 2017 We live our lives through stories – about the world, and about ourselves. You may have noticed these stories surfacing in awareness in your meditation practice. We often cling to these stories as being “true”, yet holding this wrong view conceals that these stories are impermanent, cause suffering, and ultimately, are not personal. In this…
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This Is What We Are: Foam, Bubbles, Mirage, Banana Tree Trunks and Magical Shows
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January 22, 2023 In this session, we will explore the Buddha’s wise use of images in the Phena Sutta. We will see how these are representations of the deepest teachings of Insight Meditation and how they can be relevant for us today in our quest to free the mind and heart from constriction. There will be time to practice together guided by Pascal and time for questions and beginning of answers.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of 26 May, 2025
We’re delighted to have Milla Gregor leading our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and deepen your practice.
This week’s theme is: Being Grounded: Five+ Ways
What is it, to feel grounded, for you? Contact with the earth, with fundamental interrelatedness, your body, values or lineage; with the histories of the land? What’s the opposite of being grounded? We’ll explore such ideas, grounding our reflections in embodied meditation practice.
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