I think sometimes people associate trying to meditate with constant failure. All these feelings are mandala guardians * trying to keep you out of your meditation mandala by throwing up a smoke screen of excuses. Continue reading What can we do when we feel we can’t meditate?
Seeing reality accurately is Liberation. So the doubts that trigger enquiry are our best friends on the path – open to them with humility and love – they are bringing us closer and closer to the truth… Continue reading What does ‘resting in the nature of mind’ mean? A student asks how can we be sure we’re not resting in ‘ordinary mind’ when we meditate?
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?
Think of every time you bring the attention back into the moment as no different from meditation. This helps you to develop an on-going meditative state of mind and makes it easier to link into the meditation quickly when it comes to sitting meditation. The other thing you can do is to keep making a strong wish to Awaken, at any time of day. Continue reading How To Meditate With Tiredness
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?
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’?
All the time we try to think by stepping back and trying to be objective in the sense of not recognising that splitting ourselves off from experience actually distorts it, and yet what else can we do? That is what we gradually learn in meditation… Continue reading How can the mind be limitless? How can that be true?
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?
It is interesting isn’t it? With a bit of effort we can get certain experiences that seem to be leading in the right direction and then what? There is much more to it than passing experiences… Continue reading Putting the ‘Heart’ into Meditation
We express our presence through our body, actions, movements and speech. We express it in our bearing, our posture and the way we do things. Our presence expresses itself in the way we take our place in the world, the way we take our seat. Continue reading The gift of being ‘fully present’
