Category: Meditation

photography of forest
Student's Question

How Can We Take Outdoor Meditation Deeper? Can meditating outside be too dependent on enjoying the external environment?

It’s mysterious and wonderful that we are experiencing anything at all. So the important thing is not to enjoy external things less, but to enjoy them more and to discover that way of enjoying them that then carries over into every experience. That is how we develop equanimity. Continue reading How Can We Take Outdoor Meditation Deeper? Can meditating outside be too dependent on enjoying the external environment?

Awakened Heart Sangha
tibetan singing bowl in cozy room
Student's Question

How do we work with the Formless Meditation instructions ‘Wake, Heart, Open, Be’? Doesn’t using them just involve more thinking?

The instruction is not to focus on the heart, wake, open and be. The words are there to give you the co-ordinates as it were.  When you say “heart” or simply think of the word, for a fraction of a second you experience something… Continue reading How do we work with the Formless Meditation instructions ‘Wake, Heart, Open, Be’? Doesn’t using them just involve more thinking?

Awakened Heart Sangha
Student's Question

Why do I feel so moved by the line ‘Here there is nothing to remove and nothing to add’?

We are enough just as we are – what a relief just to hear that and know we are totally loveable and adequate in ourselves – all we need now is to realise that fully and its full implications – our nature is Buddha – and what does that mean? Continue reading Why do I feel so moved by the line ‘Here there is nothing to remove and nothing to add’?

Awakened Heart Sangha
Student's Question

Can I listen to music when I meditate? Or use an object to focus on?

Some people are not able to engage properly with vipashyana because they just haven’t enough Shamata [calm abiding], and sometimes the reason is that they are too tense and so relaxation needs to be their first step.
Others are too loose so focusing on a single object helps to bring the focus back to a single point in order to settle and integrate the mind and body enough to be able to develop vipashyana. Continue reading Can I listen to music when I meditate? Or use an object to focus on?

Awakened Heart Sangha
Article, Lama Shenpen Teaching

Long Read Part 1: What is a Pure Land? And Why pray to be reborn there?

First of all we need to know what a Pure Land is and what it means. Eventually we learn that the pure land is nothing other than our true nature. The pure land manifests in the heart when we realise that our true nature is our Buddha nature. So why call this a pure land? Why a place? We are Buddha nature. We are expressions of Buddha nature so why talk about it as if it were a Pure Land? Eventually it’s a matter of seeing this world we are in now as being the Pure Land. Continue reading Long Read Part 1: What is a Pure Land? And Why pray to be reborn there?

Awakened Heart Sangha