Don’t think it should be any other way than how it is. But notice, as if you were listening for something coming from deep inside you, so be awake, attentive and relaxed. Just notice what is going on. Continue reading What to do when you feel like you’ve hit a wall with your meditation practice
Walking meditation can be a way of expressing awake, attentive awareness, a sense of freedom of movement in space, and an opening movement of the heart. It can all be there in the simple exercise of walking calmly up and down. Continue reading How to Engage with Walking Meditation
If you can relate to your present suffering with some kind of sense of it being your path, then the suffering itself becomes your practice. Just being able to let go of negative thinking and struggling with the pain and being more simple about it, that already means you are making the suffering into the path. Continue reading Meditating with physical pain – how can we make pain our practice?
Lama Shenpen answers a question on meditation from a teaching given in 2014. What’s really going on when we feel our meditation isn’t working? Is it really ‘not working’? How should we reflect on this, what insight might we be missing? Continue reading Video: What’s really going on when we feel our meditation isn’t working?
You are right when you link what brings you back to the present to the ‘Heart Wish’. It is a completely intuitive movement, isn’t it? You find you can do it and you find it feels good and right and satisfies your heart somehow. Your heart knows this is the right direction… Continue reading What is it that brings us back to the present in meditation? Is it the ‘Heart Wish’?
“The tendency is to think ‘I shouldn’t be thinking, I should be staying with the breath…” In a teaching from 2014 Lama Shenpen points out how to work with our thoughts during meditation and why thoughts aren’t a problem. Continue reading Video: Working with thoughts in meditation
…In order to manifest at all there has to be the story line – the time dimension to the manifestation… Taking Refuge and following the Bodhisattva path is a positive story line – it is important to have positive story lines or we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Continue reading Meditation doesn’t mean withdrawing from the world, so how do we remain ‘resting in spaciousness’ while still interacting with the world?
Having reflected on the heart-wish and decided that meditation is what you want to do, commit yourself to the discipline of a regular meditation schedule. It takes conscious thought and planning to establish and maintain a meditation practice. Our initial resolve to meditate can easily be eroded by the busyness of our daily lives, by our commitments and by the force of habits pulling us … Continue reading How to set up a regular meditation practice
Here, there is nothing to remove and nothing to add. The one who sees the truth of being, as it is, By seeing the truth, is liberated. In our group meditation sessions at the Awakened Heart Sangha, this verse is read out by the person leading the session (the Omzay), about five minutes before the end of each session. It is a verse from the … Continue reading What is The Meditator’s Verse?
The panic reaction is as deep as samsara [the endless cycle of birth and death] itself. There would be no samsara if there were no panic. Sometimes we let things get so close to the edge that the panic manifests as raw panic and we have to start working with the reality of that – not running away or trying to avoid it. Continue reading Why can an insight arising in meditation cause panic?
