Mindfulness

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...

Question about Understanding Words  When we are, for instance, doing a meditation retreat in a Buddhist context and reciting mantras, although we might recite it and we have some concept of the audio category of the sound of the mantra, we could have no idea of the meaning....

Feelings as Having the Four Aspects of True Suffering As we have seen, the four aspects of true suffering also apply to feelings. All feelings – happiness, unhappiness and neutral – are nonstatic, miserable, devoid of a coarse “me” experiencing them and lack a subtle “me”...

(1) With the wish to safeguard my training, I need to work hard and safeguard my mind; if I'm unable to safeguard my mind, I'll also be unable to safeguard my training. (2) Left to run loose, the elephant of my mind can ravage me with (a joyless realm of) unrelenting pain....

The Basic Prerequisites for Achieving Shamatha Having presented the various traditions that transmit methods for meditating on mahamudra, the Fourth Panchen Lama now begins his discussion of the actual methods for mahamudra practice. He explains that there are two...

Five Types of Results We were speaking about the different types of causes and conditions, and in order to finish that discussion, let’s just list the five types of results. First of all, there are ripened results. Ripened results are the unobstructive unspecified items...

Review True sufferings and the true origins of sufferings are the first two noble truths. These are the things that we need to rid ourselves of. There are four aspects that are associated with each of these and, to work with them in meditation, it is necessary to have a clear...

We have done the meditation on the close placement of mindfulness on the body and it might also be helpful to try the meditation of the close placement of mindfulness on the feelings in terms of the noble truth of the true origins of suffering. General View of Feelings as...

Mind Is Nonstatic Let’s go on to the close placement of mindfulness or mental glue now holding onto or focusing on the mind, meaning specifically primary consciousness – the five types of sense consciousness (eye, ear, nose, tongue and body consciousness) and mental...

The Fourth Noble Truth — True Pathway Minds The fourth close placement of mindfulness is on phenomena in terms of the four aspects of the fourth noble truth. “Phenomena” in this context refers to the mental factors and specifically the factor of discriminating awareness. The...