Meditation

Once we have practiced for a while, trying to maintain this deep awareness of nondual profound and clear – the profound understanding of voidness and the clarity of the visualization – then we practice the four types of mental stability. Not necessarily that we practice all...

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...

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...

Review of the Qualities of a Spiritual Teacher A guru is a great teacher, a great spiritual master or mentor, someone who is not only able to teach from knowledge of the texts but is also able to teach us by his or her own example. A living example of what Buddha has taught, a...

Finding Inspiration We have looked at the framework from which these teachings about integrating our life derive, and there are just a few more points I want to add before I open it up for questions. This is concerning the term “inspiration.” We have the Sanskrit word...

Background We are continuing our discussion of how to adjust our mental factors within the context of developing balanced sensitivity. His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks of the different aspects of Buddhism, and he differentiates Buddhist science from Buddhist religion...

We have been discussing the five types of deep awareness in relationship with the five skandhas or aggregate factors that make up our experience and the five types of disturbing emotions. There are many other systems with which we can correlate this structure of the five types...

The third preparatory practice is to arrange a proper seat, sit in the eightfold posture, and in a positive frame of mind take safe direction, or refuge, and reaffirm our bodhichitta aim. Arranging a Proper Seat According to the text, it is best (if you can do it) to have...

The Aggregates Only Include Nonstatic Phenomena As mentioned, the five aggregates are a convenient scheme to help us organize and understand our experience. Each aggregate is a collection of various similar factors that make up each moment of our experience, and they include...

Shamatha and Vipashyana All these points we have been discussing are relevant for understanding mahamudra meditation. Mahamudra meditation has two basic stages: the practices for attaining shamatha and the practices for attaining vipashyana. Shamatha is a serenely stilled...