The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
 
Retreat Dharma Talks at Gaia House

A Joyful Liberation

While meditation practice can expose us to some painful historical conditioning and habits, it also allows us to connect to deep states of peace, ease, contentment and love. The practices and teachings during this week focus on how we can hold all experience lightly, loosely and lovingly, finding depths of joy and pleasure in exploring the inner world, and a freeness of understanding and action in responding to the world around us.

2023-09-18 (6 days) Gaia House

  
2023-09-19 On Awake-ness 43:24
Martin Aylward
This talk begins with how Consciousness is fundamentally awake by nature. It explores ways this awake-ness gets obscured, ignored and suppressed, and goes on to looks at particular aspects of this awake nature and its functioning, such as consciousness, awareness, presence, and attention, then looks at the fruits of an awakened life.
2023-09-20 On Dissolution 51:52
Martin Aylward
Martin explores the essence refrain of the heart sutra, looking at emptiness in terms of gone-ness, spaciousness, and dissolution. He looks at what dissolves and what remains as our core structures dissolve, particularly in the areas of desire, belief, conformity and identity, or What I want, What I believe, How I behave and Who I take my myself to be.
2023-09-22 On Free-ness 49:13
Martin Aylward
Reflecting on the retreat title - ‘A joyful liberation’ - Martin looks at nuances of joy, and at that which is liberating, pointing beyond our formal meditation practices, into the wider realms of an integrative dharma practice with its personal, social and ecological dimensions.
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