Meditation

In our discussion of this practice, The Yoga of the Spiritual Master Inseparable from Avalokiteshvara, we have discussed taking safe direction and reaffirming our bodhichitta motivation, and now we are up to the four immeasurable attitudes, which is a very essential part of...

Review of the Preparatory Practices We have been looking at this text by the Fourth Panchen Lama called A Root Text for the Precious Gelug-Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra, and we saw that after his salutation verses, and his presentation of what the subject matter of this text...

Recognizing the Alaya for Habits In dzogchen meditation, we first access and recognize the alaya for habits, then effulgent rigpa, and then essence rigpa. How to recognize the alaya for habits? The alaya for habits gives rise to seeing and hearing, as well as to imagining and...

Making Life Meaningful Now we will continue with the text. We are on the second verse. (2) Listen with a clear (mind), O fortunate one, whose mind would rely on the path pleasing to the Triumphant through being unattached to the pleasures of compulsive existence and eager to...

The second preparatory practice is taking care about obtaining offerings without hypocrisy and setting them up in a beautiful arrangement. Different Types of Offering When Atisha went to Tibet, he recommended that people make water offerings. People were poor, obviously,...

Review We've spoke about how on any spiritual journey, like going on a caravan, we need to make preparation for the various things that we’re going to bring with us on our journey. And so what’s usually referred to as the preliminary practices are the preparation – it’s the...

Introduction to the Seven-Part Practice We need to realize that guru-yoga, a type of meditation practice, is one of the preliminaries. It’s a ngondro (sngon-’gro) practice. Ngondro means preliminary practices, and there are special preliminary practices that are shared in...

The Thai Theravada System of Four Close Placements of Mindfulness Many people nowadays practice so-called “mindfulness meditation.” Mindfulness meditation is one adaptation of the Theravada practice of the four close placements of mindfulness. The Pali term for the close...

What Meditation Does Meditation is a method for transforming and improving our lives. How? Well, our lives are affected by our personality and moods, which are affected by our living and economic situation, the people we spend our time with and so on. If we have any experience...

Review Throughout our lives we have the thought of ourselves in terms of “me” and “my life.” We’ve experienced this the entire span of our lives, not just one year of it, and because we’re not some rigid, solid blob that can’t be affected by anything, we’ve been influenced by...