Chapter 1 of “Four Immeasurables”
[…] Ten or 15 minutes to allow the attention to rest, 15 to 20 minutes working with the actual meditation, and then about 10 to 15 minutes just resting again at the end. That kind of sandwich approach is very effective. In the beginning you’re going to work with yourself. It’s, “May I be free […]
Chapter 1 of “Five Elements Five Dakinis”
The language of the five elements Ken: Mercury was the symbol for fire in the old system of cures. Air refers to all the thinking we do, and again void is the space in which all of those emotional movements can arise, and activity arises. And then we get to the way mind is. […]
Chapter 7 of “37 Practices in Four Parts”
[…] more peaceful, but after a while, I went towards dullness and I got sleepy. I was trying to be a little bit more awake, but thinking about resting in silence was less conflicted or negative than going, “Oh, pay attention to your breath again. Come back to your breath. You’ve got to come back […]
Chapter 3 of “Practicing the Diamond Sutra”
[…] formless realms. There they don’t have a solid physical body. It’s much more attenuated than that. And then it goes into whether they conceptualize, that is they’re resting in very deep states of tranquility, but there’s still some conceptualization going on, and then there’s a still higher level where there’s no conceptualization going on. […]
Chapter 7 of “Karma: Awakening From Belief”
[…] Several people have asked, “How do you recognize a reactive pattern?” Well, one of the features of a reactive pattern, as I mentioned, is that they’re mechanical in nature. What’s one of the characteristics of a mechanical system? Student: No variation. Ken: No variation. It just runs one way. So, one way—and it’s very […]
Chapter 6 of “Karma: Awakening From Belief”
[…] another thought, “Oh yeah.” But as you do this over a period of time, you begin to move back until a time comes when you’re sitting there resting with the breath, and a thought comes up and you realize, “Oh there’s a thought.” But you don’t get lost. You’re just, “Oh.” And it goes […]
Chapter 7 of “A Trackless Path II”
[…] when you allow yourself to feel that longing what do you experience? Sophie: I feel at ease. Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Yeah, June? June: A sense of resting. Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Nancy? Nancy: I long for a connection with the world but in a less personal way. And actually, it seems to galvanize […]
Chapter 1 of “Practicing the Diamond Sutra”
[…] an important part of my spiritual journey. Ken: Thank you. Yes. Jess: I’m Jess. I read Wake Up to Your Life and The Magic of Vajrayana. And in both cases, particularly about … [unclear] practice. It took something that I had read and intellectually understood for a long time, and I suddenly could do […]
Chapter 4 of “Living Awake: Who Am I?”
[…] a little, I just gave up on all the stories about it and went back to the breath. I felt it a little bit, when I’m just resting in the breath, I’m nobody, and it feels really good. And there was this real sense of spaciousness and openness and freedom and elation. I had […]
Chapter 5 of “Chö: Cutting Through the Thickets of Thinking”
Continuation of the chö visualization practice Ken: Great to do it in the dark, it gets really freaky then, but … One time I had this text memorized, not in English of course. Great Vajradhara, Tilo, Naro, Marpa, Mila, Lord Gampopa, Dusum Chenpa, totally aware Karmapa, Holders of the four great and eight lesser […]
Chapter 31 of “Then and Now: A Commentary on The Jewel Ornament of Liberation”
What do you avoid by getting impatient? Ken: Okay, this is really important. In terms of being able to live awake this is really very important. Joe: It was my experience that whenever I felt impatience arise, and felt it moving towards anger–and whatever I was unwilling to experience was different or could be […]
Chapter 30 of “Then and Now: A Commentary on The Jewel Ornament of Liberation”
What are you avoiding when you feel impatient? Ken: Okay. May thirteenth? 2008. This is class number 30 in the Then and Now series dealing with the perfection of patience. So the exercise that I left you with was … when we are impatient, usually we get impatient because there’s something we don’t want […]
Chapter 1 of “Death: Friend or Foe?”
[…] a stone which takes you down into … deep into the waters of your experience. So this is a different way of practicing from thinking about this. Resting with the sentence and all of the feelings, physical sensations, everything that comes up with respect to it. Not rejecting anything, sitting in the whole mess. […]
Chapter 3 of “37 Practices of a Bodhisattva”
[…] three, four, five, six, and seven. The first thing I’d like to do is just to take up any questions any of you have about any lines in the text in terms of what they mean, or if you suspect there’s differences between how I translated them and somebody else translated them, and you’re […]
Chapter 5 of “Finding the Way”
[…] by stopped, and as if he read his mind said, “To each outward activity, there is an inward activity. To each inward action, there is an equivalent in a far distant land.” “But,” said the man, “supposing people stopped following the observances of the path?” As if in a dream, he heard the dervish […]
