Showing results for five step practice five-step
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In order to help clarify the nature and purpose of deity practice, I discuss it here in a way that gives one the actual flavor of this practice; that is, the sense of what might actually be happening experientially in deity practice. I also suggest an approach to deity practice that doesn’t depend on […]
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[…] to Moore’s Law as it is popularly understood, computing power doubles every eighteen months. This rapid exponential growth has two important implications. The first is that every five to six years completely different spaces and completely different capabilities emerge. As a consequence, creative thinkers have limitless scope for their imagination. The second implication is […]
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In the initial stages of practice, we are consumed by thoughts. As we continue, we gradually are able to experience thoughts as thoughts, and not be distracted by them. To be a little technical, when the level of energy in the attention is higher than the level of energy in what you are experiencing, […]
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[…] cliff into an ocean of feeling and experience that is deeper, vaster, and more unknown than anything I have encountered before. So be it. I take the step. When I do, I cannot hold on to the conceptual mind. I stop being able to think in the way I ordinarily do. Another reason why […]
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[…] aspects of forgiveness—the dynamic in the relationship that tied the two parties together no longer holds. It is gone. Forgiveness is also a way for you to step out of the transactional framework that has reduced our relationship to what is or is not owed. In this sense, forgiveness is about returning to the […]
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When I look back on my first years of Buddhist practice, let’s say the first ten to twelve years, my practice was essentially a reaction to suffering. Most of the time I didn’t know what I was reacting to. I put a great deal of effort into practice, into study, into serving my teacher. […]
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This greed for results, for something dramatic, undermines our practice completely. The effects of meditation are subtle and take time to mature. When we are constantly looking for some kind of sign or attainment from our practice, we are essentially looking outside ourselves.
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[…] At some point, we take what we have learned and apply it to our own questions. We have to make the practice our own. Austerity Along with five companions, Siddhartha began a life of extreme asceticism in order to understand the source of human suffering. Tradition records that for six years he ingested only […]
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[…] locked by necessity or by choice into a materialistic approach to life. In all probability, no more than a few million have even a possibility of spiritual practice, and of those, probably only a few thousand may actually touch the mystical experience we call buddha nature. We are deeply conditioned to think and feel […]
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[…] in one of the more progressive counties of one of the more progressive states in the US, I am living in a bubble. In fact, if we step back a bit, we can see that many of us have lived in a series of both nested and overlapping bubbles and they are all popping. […]
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[…] have, in fact, taken spiritual awakening as the foundation of your life. Work with a spiritual friend and follow the way of the Dharma These are practical steps. Every teacher has their own ideas but the key point is that refuge is part of a path rather than an enthusiastic response to an initial […]
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Many problems in meditation practice come from confusion about what we think should happen, what we want to happen, and what actually happens. One way to clear up this confusion is to be clear about the purpose, method, effects and results of meditation practice.
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[…] to use your body and the equipment properly, and capacity, having the strength and ability to grip or push or hold. Later, it struck me that Buddhist practice comes down to the same three points and that many of the difficulties and imbalances experienced in practice are due to not understanding which of these […]
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[…] and aspiration prayers. Between meditation sessions, we were encouraged to read teaching and aspiration prayers to fill the time and keep our minds from wandering. We recited five or six long prayers at the end of the evening ritual. And the daylong practices involved pages and pages of prayers of many different types. All […]
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Meditation is not a quick cure-all. We are used to quick fixes: ten ways to better communication, the five magic steps for better relationships, the eight things every manager should know, etc. The trouble is that all of this good advice is useless if we aren’t sufficiently present to implement it. Meditation cultivates just […]
