Author: Loshi

Student's Question

What is Real? The Path to Truth & Lasting Happiness

We need to discover what is real – there is a path that leads to discovery of what’s real. Samsara is hard! But if you are on the path there is a sense that even the suffering is somehow a sign of deepening understanding. Without the suffering we might think it was all going to be easy.  The suffering tells us that it’s not easy and that we need patience and determination. We need to slow down, relax and reflect gently. Continue reading What is Real? The Path to Truth & Lasting Happiness

Loshi
Lama Shenpen Teaching

How the Inevitability of Change & Impermanence Heightens Our Clarity/Awareness

Reflect on the poignancy of impermanence and on the inevitability of death. Let the significance of that really strike to your heart and reflect on what is most important in life in the light of that fact. Notice how this thought heightens your awareness and how it could be used to intensify your heart wish for clarity and confidence in relation to the path of awakening Continue reading How the Inevitability of Change & Impermanence Heightens Our Clarity/Awareness

Loshi
Student's Question

Is there a balance to be achieved between practice and study?

Yes, there is right balance to be achieved between practice and study. It is important to learn from a teacher and/or reading, what are the important points or principles involved in following the path to Awakening. Most people don’t have enough personal contact to pick all this up from the teacher and so they need to combine personal contact with home study. Continue reading Is there a balance to be achieved between practice and study?

Loshi
Lama Shenpen Teaching

Listening, Reflecting & Meditating – Meditation as Integration and Attentive Viewing

There are three stages to all Buddhist practice called listening, reflecting and meditating. In fact these three stages are integral to any effective learning or process of discovery, even if usually we do no more than touch on each stage. The art is to give sufficient attention to each stage…For Buddhists, meditation is attentive viewing that opens into a process beyond the conceptual, thinking mind. Continue reading Listening, Reflecting & Meditating – Meditation as Integration and Attentive Viewing

Loshi
Student's Question

Auspiciousness: is labelling things as auspicious mere superstition and more delusion?

So there is something to ponder about here. If our usual view of the cosmos in which we grasp at entities fixed in time and space actually turns out to be deluded, then how do the events of our lives unfold as if in time and space? What is the connection between things that are not things and are not there? Continue reading Auspiciousness: is labelling things as auspicious mere superstition and more delusion?

Loshi
Student's Question

Noticing ways we delude ourselves: noticing Avidya and Mara

This is Mara at work – it is almost a gut reaction.  Something in us is so deeply entrenched we don’t want to disturb it – or rather it doesn’t want to be disturbed. This can often account for why sometimes we find ourselves drifting off instead of really focusing in an awake and alive way when we are meditating.  We really have to look closely to see what that is all about. Continue reading Noticing ways we delude ourselves: noticing Avidya and Mara

Loshi
Lama Shenpen Teaching

Meditation: Recognising ‘the watcher’ as thinking too

When we talk about meditation in terms of letting go of thoughts, it can seem as if it is a matter of setting oneself up as an observer of one’s mind and to root out thinking. This is a misunderstanding of the whole process. Setting up a watcher in this way perpetuates our false sense of what we are and what our experience is. The observer might well be well intentioned, but the problem is that it is heavy-handed and believes too much in itself. Continue reading Meditation: Recognising ‘the watcher’ as thinking too

Loshi