02Mar/18

50 Meditation States You Must Let Go (Part I: Form)

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Along your path of practice, you will encounter some interesting physical, mental, and spiritual phenomena. In meditation, you may feel parts of your body shake uncontrollably, you may sense heat circulate through or grow in parts of you, you may have visions, you may hear voices, you may be one with the world. Know that even more meditation experiences await you as you deepen your regular practice. You must also remember that these states of being are transitory signs pointing to an intensive and advancing practice, not ultimate enlightenment. Hence for each experience the same refrain about being relentless with continued awareness, avoiding the derailing belief that you are now awakened, a sage. Here is List I of 10 states associated with the form aggregate among the 50 for the 5 aggregates.
17Feb/18

2 Ways to Create a Sanctuary

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The physical environment makes an impact us. You look forward to being home after a long day’s work, maybe the same spot on the couch or in bed. You walk into certain places and you immediately feel a sense of peace or agitation. Yeah, you can practice meditation in the middle of a mass protest, a sports outing, or a rock concert, but that’s just not where you’d want to create a sanctuary on a regular basis. Although the Shurangama sanctuary instructions provided below, the easier way, allows you to create a short-term or long-term sanctuary energetically anywhere, I would recommend you take advantage of creating a physical space too to support the consistent build up of energy. We’re after a sanctuary that is more than something in the mind alone, and one that we can come home to.
15Feb/18

28 Literal and Psycho-Spiritual Heavenly States for the Blessed

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While you are agonizing over a numbness or ache in your body during meditation time, you may not think you are blessed like a heavenly deva, but you are. Heavenly beings are those with much blessings, such as for those of us residing in the West. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to enter blissful meditation states, and beings of heavenly realms do that best. I mean heavenly beings in a literal and a figurative sense. For serious meditators, you may want to check your progress against the descriptions of these heavenly realms, analyzing and comparing them only after you exit meditation of course. Were you to think about how well you are doing in meditation during meditation, you wouldn’t be meditating well.
02Feb/18

5 Reasons that Listening and Compassion Foster One Another

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When you reach a psychological, social, spiritual impasse or bottleneck, you’re usually short of time and likely want to push forward or give up completely. That’s precisely the moment to take a little time to listen to the sound of silence, to the internal voice or higher power. Setting aside the problems for a little while allows you to hear possible creative solutions.
25Jan/18

24 Reasons for Choosing Listening as an Enlightening Practice

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Listening by contemplating on the source of the ear organ is the recommended practice for this era because only sound can be heard through walls and all around. You can practice all hours of the day; even while you’re asleep or deep in a dream, you can hear sounds, including the sound of silence. The sound of silence is a sound with a source in you who hear. You first notice sounds in movement and stillness, then you realize that the object of sound neither comes into being nor ceases. Instead of listening to the wisdom of others, why not listen to that which listens? Contemplate: who is it that listens? Listen until even listening ceases.
22Jan/18

25 Meditation Practices Leading to Enlightenment

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Once upon a time, the wisest soul around lovingly gathered his top students. All beings who became enlightened through 25 practices circled around the Buddha one balmy evening. The Buddha Shakyamuni knew that his students have valuable lessons to share with those of the present and future, so he asked each: “Tell me how you entered meditative absorption and actualized your potentiality for wisdom and compassion.”
26Oct/17

4 Foundational Purifications for Enlightenment

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If you expect to evolve spiritually, you must exert yourself. If you expect miracle to strike simply because you willed it, it’s not likely to happen. You must cultivate the terra firma of your soul so it flowers fruits. You must cleanse the vessel that carries the messages of wisdom and compassion. You must polish the instrument that ignites and channels the transcendental. According to the Shurangama Sutra, a Mahayana Buddhist text that is revered for its teachings on meditation a long and powerful Buddhist mantra, here are four ways to dig deep into the soil of your soul, to bath your messenger, and to make your physical instrument for practice shine.