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From the Buddhist point of view the mind-body system with which we identify has the seed of attention within it already. We simply provide conditions for sustained active attention to develop. The practice of meditation is the practice of providing those conditions. This is how we cultivate attention, just as we would a plant or tree.
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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 that presence, so we could regard it as a foundational skill.
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One of the primary characteristics of learned helplessness is that the person feels passive with respect to the system. The passivity, however, is only half the story… Can learned helplessness be undone? The answer is “Yes.” The cost, however, is high.
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The teacher-student relationship is based on a shared aim—your awakening to the mystery of being. It is not based on mutual profit or on emotional connection. The responsibilities of a teacher are three: Everything else is extra and is usually based on the projections of the student, the teacher, or both. If the teacher is […]
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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 one’s ability to visualize vividly. After all, the purpose of this practice is not to generate sparkling imagery but to transform the way we experience the world and ourselves. Finally, for those who take up this practice, I suggest ways you might use the deity to be awake and present in your life.
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Everyone knows the old adage “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” In the work environment, the trees are the immediate pressures you feel: demands and directives from above, needs and problems from below. The forest is the bigger picture, the picture beyond the immediate pressures. Most people react to remove pressures as quickly […]
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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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Compassion is the difference between a faith that opens you to what life brings and beliefs that force you to close down to protect what you cannot or will not question. Compassion enables you to accept and appreciate the experience of those with whom you have differences. In difficult situations, it leads you to find a way that meets the vital interests of all concerned when possible and to minimize the pain when that is not possible. Compassion puts you directly in touch with the human condition. It cuts through beliefs. It goes straight to the heart.
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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. I learned a great deal. But it didn’t ease anything inside me. It wasn’t until much later that I began to appreciate in a very different way what Kalu Rinpoche had attempted to teach me, what Buddha originally taught, and what practice might mean.
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The vast array of methods and techniques which comprise Buddhism, particularly the Tibetan tradition, are all to help us come to know simply what we are, buddha, awake and aware. Time and time again, we are told that we are buddha, that the buddha qualities are present now, but that we just don’t know it. The problem, for many of us, is that this knowing is not a form of knowing that we are used to. We need tools and methods to dismantle the emotional blocks, the habitual patterns, the worries, concerns, expectations, and hopes that keep us from trusting and knowing what we are.
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The most effective effort is to listen to ourselves as we are talking. This effort brings attention to our speech. When we do this, we will hear when what we say doesn’t fit the situation, when it isn’t what we intended to say, or how we intended to say it. We will hear, with our own ears, the different emotional patterns that take over our speech. We will hear how what we say doesn’t fit with our intention, how it comes out of our confusion, how it doesn’t quite fit with the situation. And as we make this effort over and over again, we will find that we begin to speak with attention in exactly the same way that we come to breath with attention in our meditation. This is how we practice right speech.
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What is it like to do nothing? I mean, really do nothing, nothing at all — no recalling what has happened, no imagining what might happen, no reflecting on what is happening, no analyzing or explaining or controlling what you experience. Nothing! Why would you even try? We struggle in life because of a tenacious […]
