Balanced Sensitivity

Quieting Down We started the training just briefly with the exercise for quieting the mind. When we say “quiet the mind,” that doesn’t mean to turn off everything like the radio is off, but rather it means to quiet down the unnecessary things that are going on in our mind so...

The Necessity for a Pragmatic Means Imagining what it would be like to be as perfectly balanced in our sensitivity as a Buddha gives us some idea of the goal we would like to achieve. Comparing our present level of sensitivity with this ideal also helps motivate us to...

Both grasping at mental activity's natural facets for security and fearing them as a threat arise from projecting and believing in dualistic and triplistic appearances. Deconstructing these confusing appearances leaves us with merely the experience of these natural functions....

This bibliography was originally published as an appendix to Developing Balanced Sensitivity: Practical Buddhist Exercises for Daily Life. Ithaca, Snow Lion, 1998, and published here in the preceding items on this website in individual parts.  Major Tibetan, Sanskrit and Pali...

The Need for Ethics Responding to others or to ourselves with balanced sensitivity entails refraining from destructive, harmful behavior and engaging in constructive, helpful acts. Restraint from destructive behavior sets the foundation. For example, if we have not...

The Necessity for Joint Development of Warmth and Understanding Achieving enlightenment requires broadening and strengthening our innate networks of positive force and deep awareness until they become networks of enlightening forms and of all-loving deep awareness encompassing...

The naturally occurring internal resources that allow for balanced sensitivity – joy, focus, warmth, understanding, self-control, and a feeling of inspiration – are all factors of mind and heart. To work effectively with these factors requires a powerful conceptual...

Mental Activity as Clear Light Many Buddhist texts describe the nature of mind – in other words, the nature of mental activity – as "clear light." Clear light, however, is merely an analogy. It does not mean that we possess, literally, a light source deep inside, like a...

In Exercise Two, we relied on a line of reasoning to generate one of the ingredients of balanced sensitivity, a caring attitude. In Exercise Three, we imagined our mental activity containing all the necessary qualities. In Exercise Four, we accessed a basis level of some of...

Basic Description of the Five Types of Awareness An additional asset of subtlest clear light mind is that five types of deep awareness naturally endow it as part of our innate network of deep awareness. These five are a topic discussed primarily in the highest class of...