Posts

Showing posts from May 3, 2009

Cultivating New Attitudes (part four)

Image
Traditional Buddhism creates a powerful antidote to help you discover how you are actually alive. The basis for the Mahayana, the path of altruistic compassion teaches that human life needs to have another object other than yourself. By contrast, the suffering ordinary life with the innate base illogical view, is very much dependent upon looking at yourself! The antidote is the Mahayana view of giving you a change of perceptions to cultivate while encouraging you toward the spontaneous accomplishment of beneficial intention. Perhaps you have read about the bodhisattvas, compassion and heroes, but it will still not touch you until you understand that you are not alive in the way you think you are. Many work hard at being a bodhisattva when it is the actual being's transformation and energetic healing into another form in its evolutionary journey that they need to facilitate instead. The Mahayana or Greater Vehicle asks us to consider caring for all sentient beings as a valid al

Cultivating New Attitudes (Part three)

Image
These examples from part two such as sleep, daydreaming and lost in rummaging through past memories you are already familiar. These show that your awareness could be either elsewhere or little aware while the world and activities are going on around you. However, this becomes a habitual method to hold your energy by perceiving your present moment as either in the future or in the past. I gave a teaching focusing on this subject called Cultivating Joy. It is very interesting and also has some meditations to help find the present moment. Some people use body awareness meditations or techniques in order to control or reduce fascination with mental events that prevent them from experiencing the feeling of being present. There are many body calming or mind calming meditations that will also help us to become more balanced or remain centered. The mind can then find some temporary rest and be aware without dwelling in the past or the future. Even with techniques to control your reactiv

Cultivating New Attitudes (part two)

Image
Yesterday there was much discussion about what feelings we wanted to be experiencing. Instead of having the feelings that you want, you have to endure feelings that are something else, not pleasant or not to your liking. However, we note here that the “ something else ” that you receive in place of what you want, is not necessarily the opposite of the pleasant you desire to feel. For example, you could answer that question of not feeling happy without saying or meaning “ I feel unhappy” ”. Just because you are not happy or more specifically, not experiencing the feeling of happiness, does not mean that you are unhappy. Using informal unexamined logic; most people assume that if something is true, its opposite is false. If you are not this, then you are definitely its opposite. It might be the case where you are simply not experiencing happiness, and rather than experiencing unhappiness; you might feel like you are under some kind of anesthetic. In fact, when we talk about feel

Cultivating New Attitudes (part one)

Image
I taught on wisdom in general recently, and we established many different terms regarding this wisdom word that is thrown about so casually. You know, you can probably buy wisdom tea, and perhaps it comes in little organic bags; wisdom tea or wisdom soap. I bet someone makes wisdom soap. You could also find a cotton shirt made of wisdom cotton. So, if you attach the word wisdom to anything, there will be a certain number of people who will rush out and buy it! I am just joking. That is not exactly true, but perhaps. Now we take time so that we can use established methods by which students or you and I can dialogue regarding different kinds of wisdom so that we mutually understand what valuation we are applying. An important aspect of this includes gaining confidence in your ability to manipulate Buddhist concepts. Just because various deeper or more subtle wisdoms exist, are described as important dynamics, and are acknowledged as the basis for transformative experience, it is

Recipe for Enlightenment (part five)

Image
For the benefit of the meditators development, energy needs to be transmuted into another kind of usable source of energy more suitable for the inner environment. Even the energy of high thinking and disciplined smooth, yogic energies, will have to be transmuted into another form in the interior in order to be used for the transformative event of enlightenment. What to say about the rough and unstable energies of a proud and angry meditator? Aberrant energies will disrupt a careful recipe like someone stamping around the kitchen while there is a soufflé in the oven. We must be gentle with our minds so that we do not encourage rough thoughts that will invite their rowdy companions. These rough companions of rough thoughts, such as blame and shame, competitiveness, and more, will spoil the inner nutrition process because these elements begin to interact with each other very much like talking to each other, and the noise is terrible inside. This is another piece of the careful meditat

Recipe for Enlightenment (Part four)

Image
The Tibetan tradition is quite powerful and has trained countless practitioners how to become respectful enough to receive the extraordinary blessings that are features of the Vajrayana path to enlightenment. It is reported often that even those in training to become teachers and come from long and famous reincarnation lineages experience some anxiety when in the presence of their own teacher. I also in my before had this experience, when I was in my study time, with my knees shaking, and my heart pounding in the presence of my guru. Others have also said this, sometimes they cannot even speak. Sometimes, we felt like we wanted to run away but we did not! This actually is what happens when the lama is showing them reality from the inside and their inner mind is receiving guidance. This is not baby Buddhism, we are not talking about baby food nutrition in this recipe for enlightenment! I have talked occasionally to students who have experienced something strong coming from inside

Recipe for Enlightenment (part three)

Image
We continue the discussion on cogitation meditation from yesterday. This meditation technique and energetic is like an enfoldment or unfolding of thinking. Rather than looking, thinking, adding more ideas to the thought, you are waiting in encouragement while this enfoldment is drawing forth elements that need to be viewed and understood. This ability only comes with steady practice so not much more needs to be said about this for now. The cogitation meditation results are gathered into realizations. These minor breakthroughs are characterized by the arisal of a new state of mind or new thought patterns. These minor breakthroughs and new states of mind could also be attained by removal of a difficult state of mind or difficult dynamic. With that removal, a careful ingredient that was previously hidden from the meditator becomes exposed. Something you might have already developed in a previous time; this life or another life was hidden by another dynamic. For example, this becom