Dharma Sunday

What if imagination isn’t mere fantasy, but a doorway into profound spiritual reality? Join us for an exploration of how three great wisdom traditions—Jungian depth psychology, Sufi mysticism, and Vajrayana Buddhism—understand the transformative power of visionary experience. We’ll journey through Carl Jung’s discovery of archetypes of the collective unconscious during his personal crisis, Ibn al-...

What does it mean to learn from a teacher, and how does that relationship support awakening? In this hour-long dharma talk, we’ll explore the role of the teacher–student relationship in spiritual practice—its possibilities, challenges and ethical foundations.  Drawing on traditional teachings and contemporary perspectives, the talk will reflect on the role of discernment, trust, inner wisdom, resp...

This special meditation session will focus on weaving together a profound blend of practices inspired by Longchenpa’s three excellences, along with other potent methods for awakening the special kind of courage, compassion, and spiritual strength needed in these challenging times. These perilous times challenge us all to source new depths of spiritual strength, wisdom, compassion, inspiration, and...

The terms “Awakening” and “Realization” are used in many different ways and are often interchangeable. Join us to explore all the angles, all the while striving to maintain plausible deniability. Beyond the embarrassment that “Enlightenment” is something we in fact can have no idea about, the terms “Awakening” and “Realization” are used in many different ways in many different paths. We will exami...

This class combines body-oriented meditation practice with a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson, the brilliant sensory-motor approach to gently and wisely re-educating the neuro-muscular system. Alternating meditation, a Feldenkrais movement lesson and discussion will allow the techniques to complement and empower each other and to enhance mind-body connections and general well-being. M...

What does it mean to become truly present and why does it matter? In this midday Sunday session, we will explore radical presence, a state of being that understands that there is only–and only ever will be–the here and now. To enter radical presence means to grapple with how we self-exile: all the ways we absence our body, parts of our world, and even our life itself.  We will consider how returni...

Natural Dharma Fellowship’s Dharma Sundays are donation-based gatherings open to all, offering a wide range of topics. Led by highly trained NDF Dharma and guest teachers, these live, interactive sessions include guided meditation, teachings, and time for questions and discussion. Please join us to settle into the support of sangha and the joy of practicing together.

Natural Dharma Fellowship’s Dharma Sundays are donation-based gatherings open to all, offering a wide range of topics. Led by highly trained NDF Dharma and guest teachers, these live, interactive sessions include guided meditation, teachings, and time for questions and discussion. Please join us to settle into the support of sangha and the joy of practicing together.

“This suffering is a matter not just of empathy but also of material interdependence.” Space, Alive: The amniotic fluid in which we learn to float. Our shared medium with all beings. Each aggregation always different, unique. Aggregations of aggregations, of aggregations affecting one another across “universes” “internal” and “external”…boundless. Pulsing.

On this Dharma Sunday, and as we prepare to step into the New Year, we will explore the power of light to remind us of who we really are, and to return us to an immersion in loving awareness as a source for renewed activity and care in the world. Join Lama Liz for this fifth installation of the Forest Teachings, a series of offerings exploring different avenues through which we can transform our l...

Natural Dharma Fellowship’s Dharma Sundays are donation-based gatherings open to all, offering a wide range of topics. Led by highly trained NDF Dharma and guest teachers, these live, interactive sessions include guided meditation, teachings, and time for questions and discussion. Please join us to settle into the support of sangha and the joy of practicing together.

Join Lama Willa Baker and the online sangha of Natural Dharma Fellowship for a morning of teaching, prayer, contemplation, meditation practice, and community. Not by the book, Willa’s Dharma Sundays reflect what is most immediately and spontaneously on her heartmind. Time is allotted at the end of every Sunday session for audience participation, questions and reflections. Bring your curiosity, que...

Freedom is part of our practice. We cultivate the roots of our practice to remind ourselves and each other that this is the best time to practice. Roots are the foundation that ground plants in the soil. So too, as we ground ourselves with the source of freedom that our Buddhist practice offers, we embody the underlying support that allows us to be a refuge in these turbulent times for ourselves a...

This Dharma Sunday explores part IV of Forest Teachings. Join us as we explore the intersection between meditation on the nature of mind through the lens of deep ecology in practice. Such a merging invites us to recover our forgotten intimacy with the living world. Deep ecology has long called for a shift in consciousness, while meditation enacts such a shift through recognition of who we really a...

Darkness practice is one of the most powerful methods for stripping away the conceptual veils covering our luminous buddha nature. Practiced in many spiritual traditions across the world, dark retreat is a deeply cherished tradition in a number of Tibetan Buddhist lineages surviving today. We will introduce some aspects of darkness practice, with an eye towards personal practice in the future. Ple...

This Dharma Sunday will explore Rupa-Bhavana, the cultivation of embodiment. This practice, one of the five cultivation categories taught by the Buddha, focuses on techniques to develop greater discernment, capacity, and balanced sensitivity regarding our felt experience.

Join Lama Willa Baker and the online sangha of Natural Dharma Fellowship for a morning of teaching, prayer, contemplation, meditation practice, and community. Not by the book, Willa’s Dharma Sundays reflect what is most immediately and spontaneously on her heartmind. Time is allotted at the end of every Sunday session for audience participation, questions and reflections. Bring your curiosity, que...

On this hybrid Dharma Sunday, we will continue exploring what it means to cultivate our innate capacity to relax into beingness with the energies of the phenomenal world. How we approach a renewed engagement with the more-than-human world can have a significant effect on our recognition and embodiment of innate inseparability. Through what kinds of skillful means can we invite the kind of connecti...

In his sublime meditation manual Mahamudra the Ocean of Definitive Meaning, the Ninth Karmapa briefly describes a four-step analysis for cutting through the illusion of a separate external reality presenting itself to sense perception. This session will examine the four steps and draw on insights from current cognitive philosophy and physics to offer a simple but powerful approach to challenge the...

Join Lama Willa Baker and the online sangha of Natural Dharma Fellowship for a morning of teaching, prayer, contemplation, meditation practice, and community. Not by the book, Willa’s Dharma Sundays reflect what is most immediately and spontaneously on her heartmind. Time is allotted at the end of every Sunday session for audience participation, questions and reflections. Bring your curiosity, que...

In this Dharma Sunday, we’ll learn strategies for meditating so that our practice doesn’t reactivate trauma symptoms, based on David Trelevean’s groundbreaking book Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness. This session will be helpful both for trauma survivors and for anyone experiencing dysregulation, overwhelm, disorientation, or a loss of agency. The instructor will cover the Window of Tolerance and Polyv...

This Dharma Sunday session begins with a Refuge Prayer and a guided meditation that grounds the body and expands into open awareness. Lama Liz then dives into the core question: How do we return to our true nature? She challenges the modern materialist mentality and explores how to move beyond the contracted "self" to access a vaster field of interbeing—the ancient, interconnected source that rede...

The “Four Empowerments” characterize the essence of the tantric Buddhist path. We will explore the internal structure of these four initiations and how we can relate with them as practitioners. Central to this exploration is the idea that initiation is an organic part of human experience. What seems esoteric, foreign, and unknown, is from another perspective natural and genuine. We will explore th...