Meditation

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...

Sutra and Tantra Mahamudra There are various traditions of mahamudra: there’s the sutra tradition and the tantra tradition. The sutra traditions involve the various methods for meditating on voidness, which is the absence of all fantasized, impossible ways of existing. The...

Review We ended the last session with an exercise in which we practiced enhancing our mirror-like deep awareness. It’s important to remember that this type of deep awareness is not like a mirror or a still camera; it’s more like a video camera. We’re taking in information...

The Four-Point Analysis: Neither One nor Many We discussed voidness or emptiness in Buddhism, particularly in terms of the absence of a true identity for ourselves – the absence of an impossible false “me” – and we have talked a little bit about how to meditate. Now...

The Meaning of Feelings in the Context of the Five Aggregates The second aggregate is the aggregate of feelings. In this context, it means feeling a level of happiness or unhappiness. This aggregate is not referring to emotional feelings; instead, it deals with the single...

Questions Adding the Four Immeasurables to the Meditation In our last session we tried the exercise with a focus on our mothers. Any questions about the meditation, about the process and so on? Can we say that the meditation on the four immeasurables is linked to this practice...

The First Aspect of Close Placement of Mindfulness on the Body: The Body as Being Nonstatic, Impermanent We saw in the Mahayana tradition that with the general way of focusing on the body, what we distinguish about it is that it is unclean and impure. We take our body to mind...

The Definition of Mind: General Considerations Having discussed the preliminaries, let us now turn to the actual practice of mahamudra – meditation on the nature of mind. When we raise the topic of the nature of mind, we of course need to explore first what we mean by...

We have been looking at methods for integrating the various aspects of our lives. We’ve seen that in order to deal with the various things in our lives and in order to follow the spiritual path in a more whole-hearted way, it’s very important to have a clear idea of all the...

Review Thus far, we have discussed two of the aggregates that make up our experience: forms of physical phenomena and the feelings of some level of happiness. Each of these aggregates of changing phenomena is made up of many items, and we experience an assortment of them...