Via Lion's Roar / How to Practice Shamatha Meditation

How to Practice Shamatha Meditation

by Lama Rod Owens| July 9, 2019

Shamatha meditation—mindfulness or concentration—is the foundation of Buddhist practice. Lama Rod Owens teaches us a version from the Vajrayana tradition.

Illustration by Carole Henaff.

Shamatha means “peaceful abiding” or “tranquility.” Also called mindfulness or concentration meditation, shamatha is an important introductory practice that leads to the practice of vipashyana, or insight meditation.

The purpose of shamatha meditation is to stabilize the mind by cultivating a steady awareness of the object of meditation. The traditional practice of shamatha uses different kinds of supports or anchors for our practice. Eventually, this leads to practicing without supports and meditating on emptiness itself in an open awareness. For this particular practice, the instructions will be for shamatha meditation using the breath as the focus of our practice.

Shamatha mediation allows us to experience our mind as it is. When we practice shamatha, we are able to see that our mind is full of thoughts, some conducive to our happiness and further realization, and others not. It is not extraordinary that our minds are full of thoughts, and it is important to understand that it is natural to have so much happening in the mind.
Over time, practicing shamatha meditation calms our thoughts and emotions. We experience tranquility of mind and calmly abide with our thoughts as they are. Eventually, this leads to a decrease in unhelpful thoughts.

When we experience stable awareness, we are then ready to practice vipashyana, in which we develop insight into what “mind” is by investigating the nature of thoughts themselves. In the Vajrayana tradition of Buddhism, the ultimate goal is to practice calm abiding and insight in union, which opens the door to realizing the true nature of mind.

Traditionally, shamatha practice is taught through instructions on the physical body and then looking at the meditation instructions themselves.

The Seven-Point Posture

The seven-point posture of Vairochana is an ancient set of posture points that are said to align the physical body with our energetic body. The posture has been practiced for thousands of years by Hindu and Buddhist yogis. The seven points are:

1. Sit cross-legged.
2. Hands in lap or on knees.
3. Have a straight back.
4. Widen the shoulders to open the heart center.
5. Lower the chin.
6. Open mouth slightly with the tongue resting on the roof of the mouth.
7. Eyes open, gazing about four finger widths past the tip of nose.

A Body-Sensitive Posture

We all have different bodies and capabilities. It is important to adjust this demanding traditional posture to meet the needs of our own bodies, and not struggle to adapt our bodies to the posture. What is most important in terms of body posture is keeping the back and spine as straight as possible and remaining comfortable. So the seven points of a more body-sensitive posture could be:

1. Sit on a cushion or a chair, stand, or lie down.
2. Arrange your hands in any way that is comfortable.
3. Hold your back as straight as possible.
4. Keep your shoulders relaxed and chest open.
5. Hold your head at whatever level is comfortable.
6. Keep your lower jaw slightly open.
7. Keep the eyes closed or open.

The Meditation

There are many kinds of breath meditations. Some have been written down, while others have only been transmitted orally from teacher to student. The following is a basic breath meditation from the Vajrayana tradition:

1. Adjust the body into a comfortable position, and start the practice by becoming aware of your breath. Notice the inhalation and exhalation.
2. As you notice the breath, continue to let go of thoughts as they arise. Each time you are distracted by clinging to a thought, return to the breath. Keep doing this over and over again.
3. Eventually, as you exhale, become aware of your breath escaping and dissolving into space. Experience the same thing with the inhalation.
4. Slowing down, begin to allow your awareness to mix into open space with the breath on both the inhale and exhale.
5. To deepen the practice, begin to hold the breath after the inhalation for a few seconds before exhaling. By doing this, you are splitting the breath into three parts: inhalation, holding, and exhalation. Keep doing this.
6. As you inhale, begin to chant om to yourself. As you hold, chant ah. As you exhale, chant hung. Chanting these sacred syllables helps to further support awareness and is believed to purify our minds.
7. As you continue with exhalation, relax more. Continue awareness practice, letting go of thoughts and returning to the breath. Do this for as long as you can.

Make the jump here to read the original and more

Via Daily Dharma: How Much Can We Forgive?

Consider the possibility, and I am only saying consider the possibility, that maybe nothing is unforgivable. Maybe there is a way to find forgiveness even for what we have believed for so long to be unforgivable. Explore this mindfully.

—Allan Lokos, “Lighten Your Load”

Via Ram Dass ? Words of Wisdom - July 10, 2019 💌

Working to accept death does not exclude efforts to heal the body. In other words, you can go and swim with the dolphins, have chemotherapy or radiation, or whatever, if simultaneously you are also working on death. So that you can keep the balance even. ‘Ah, death. Ah, life.’ That’s the optimum place.
Not, ‘I wish for death’ or, ‘I’m going towards death.’ Also not, ‘I must have life’ or, ‘I can’t possibly have death.’ Because it’s the aversion and attraction that are the root of the suffering which turns into a problem at the moment of death.

- Ram Dass -

Via Paper Cranes to Fort Sill – In Solidarity with Detailed Asylum Seekers

Paper Cranes to Fort Sill – In Solidarity with Detailed Asylum Seekers

9 de jul de 2019 — 

Dream Action Oklahoma (affiliated with United We Dream, the nation’s largest immigration youth-led network) is organizing a coalition of groups in Oklahoma for a large peaceful protest at Fort Sill on Saturday, July 20, 2019.

This past March, Tsuru for Solidarity, a direct action, nonviolent project of allied organizations within the Japanese American community, gathered in Crystal City, Oklahoma in collaboration with pilgrims from allied national organizations and networks. Crystal City, a former WWII internment camp in Texas, housed over 2,000 persons of Japanese ancestry. The gathering was to protest conditions at the nearby South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. 30,000 tsuru(origami cranes) were strung on the fences surrounding the detention center to demonstrate solidarity with those detained, including unaccompanied children separated from their families.

Last month, the Dept. of Health and Human Services announced that up to 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children would be transferred from Texas to Fort Sill, Oklahoma—another former WWII internment camp that held 700 persons of Japanese ancestry, including 90 Buddhist priests. Tsuru for Solidarity has been invited to participate and a Buddhist memorial service will be part of the day’s events.

Fort Sill, a military site, is a historic concentration camp that was used to imprison indigenous people forcibly removed from their lands. It is a place where native children were forcibly taken from their families and placed in re-education schools. It is a site where over 700 American men from the Japanese American community, including 90 Buddhist monks, were imprisoned during WWII. 

Concentration camps are used to indefinitely detain minority groups in violation of human and civil rights and without due process. Fort Sill is being prepared to once again become a concentration camp. Concentration camps are now being used across the U.S. on a scale not seen since the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans.

It's time for us to reclaim our moral center and our human commitment to one another. 

We are interconnected. What happens to one of us affects all of us. 

Speak out, show up, and get involved.

Please join us in this movement. 

We invite you to get involved by: 

1) ATTENDING
2) FOLDING & SENDING paper cranes
Click here for detailed instructions & a video on how to fold paper cranes.
3) DONATING 
4) SHARING the message
Click here for more information.

 

Via Lion's Roar / Seeing Beyond the Screen

Seeing Beyond the Screen

Yael Shy on how to bring mindfulness into your digital life.

The key to mindful living “off the cushion” is building in a pause to check in with our intention, our body, and our heart before we reach for our favorite distractions. Nowhere is this more palpable and powerful than in our relationships to our devices. When do you reach for your phone? When do you click on social media sites? How do you feel right before heading to your page on the site? What happens in your mind while scrolling or posting? How do you feel afterward?

Make the jump here to read the original and more

Via Lion's Roar / Finding Wisdom in the Smartphone

FINDING WISDOM IN
THE SMARTPHONE 

I invented a new practice for myself recently. Here’s the instruction: don’t look at your phone.

That’s what I tell myself when I feel myself start to get restless. Waiting for the elevator. Waking up in the morning. Standing alone at a party.

And it doesn’t mean Never look at your phone. There are many moments throughout the day when it’s reasonable to do so. But I often look at my phone by default, even when there’s no reason to. Or, worse, I look at it because I’m avoiding something uncomfortable — like a squishy emotion.

When I try this new practice of not looking at my phone, I discover a lot. Sometimes, choosing not to look at my phone reminds me that there’s something I’m avoiding. Other times, it reminds me to relax and enjoy myself. And other times still, it prompts me to ask: what am I using this phone for?

Most of us have smartphones — literal supercomputers strapped to our hips. How are we using them? How are they using us? I find that when I start asking these questions, this object of distraction starts to become an object of meditation.

—Sam Littlefair, editor, LionsRoar.com

PS: If you want to take your smartphone practice a step further, check out our growing list of Buddhist iPhone apps.

Via Daily Dharma: The Open Arms of Dharma

The dharma, it seems, is big enough not just to endure us, but to embrace us, in all of our muck and glory.

—Anne Cushman, “Under The Lens: An American Zen Community In Crisis”

Via Daily Dharma: A Tender and Forgiving Practice

Maybe the first rule we should begin with, if we want meditation to be in our life for a long time, is: Don’t make a rigid structure and then chastise ourselves when we don’t live up to it. Better to keep a limber mind and develop a tenderness toward existence.

—Natalie Goldberg, “Rules for a Long-Term Relationship”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 7, 2019 💌

The truth is everywhere. Wherever you are, it’s right where you are, when you can see it. And you can see it through whatever vehicle you are working with, you can free yourself from certain attachments that keep you from seeing it. The scientist doesn’t stop being a scientist, nor anybody stop being anything. You find how to do the things to yourself which allow you to find truth where you are at the moment. I’d say we never find out anything new, we just remember it.

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Finding the Sacred in Change Inbox x

In trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. It’s easy to forget that life and death are part of the natural scheme of things, intrinsic to our lives in an eternally shifting universe.

—Ronna Kabatznick, “Sea of Sorrow”

Via Daily Dharma: How to Be Free

If you can maintain a mind of equanimity, you are free, no matter what the conditions.

—Master Sheng-Yen, “The Wanderer”

Via Daily Dharma: Realizations on the Path

On the absolute level, our nature is buddha, we are the deity. But unaware of this, we’re bound by relative truth. In order to make the leap to the realization of our absolute nature, we have to walk on our relative feet, on a relative path.

—Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, “Prayer: Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche”

Simon & Garfunkel - American Tune (from The Concert in Central Park)

American Tune

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high…

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest

Source: LyricFind

I Won’t Sing Here Anymore

I Won't Sing Here Anymore from Ross Productions on Vimeo.

Via Daily Dharma: Seeing America Through the Dharma’s Lens

America is a nation that is always dynamically evolving—a nation of becoming, its composition and character constantly transformed by migrations from many corners of the world, its promise made manifest not by an assertion of a singular or supremacist racial and religious identity, but by the recognition of the interconnected realities of a complex of peoples, cultures, and religions that enrich everyone.

—Duncan Ryuken Williams, “Thus Have I Heard: An American Sutra”

Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - July 3, 2019 💌

When you stand back far enough, all of your life experiences, independent of what they are, are all learning experiences. From a human point of view, you do your best to optimize pleasure, happiness, all the nice things in life. From your soul’s point of view you take what comes down the pike. So from the soul’s perspective, you work to get what you want and then if you don’t ‘ah, so, I’ll work with what I’ve got.’ 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: An Ever-Changing Landscape

Our hearts and minds change from moment to moment, just as the clouds shift in the evening sky as the sun goes down. Who are we to think we have grasped the true nature of our souls?

—Abbess Fushimi, “Shedding Light”

Via Tricycle: Tonglen: Sending out happiness and taking in suffering

Tonglen is a form of Buddhist practice from the “mind-training” (lojong) teachings given by the important 11th-century Indian master Atisha. An essential part of mind training is overcoming what’s referred to as “self-cherishing,” which in this context means clinging to a narrow, egotistical mindset. 

Tonglen is one of the tools mind training offers to weaken our tendency to self-cherish. Literally “sending and taking,” tonglen refers to visualizing oneself breathing in (taking) the suffering of beings, then breathing out (sending) one’s own well-being to alleviate that suffering.  

The simplest version of tonglen consists of first taking a moment to rest in the natural spaciousness of the mind, or to ground and settle yourself. You then picture the suffering in the world—you can also home in on a certain person in need or a certain circumstance—and breathe it into yourself in the form of thick, heavy black smoke that dissolves in your heart. Opening your heart to feelings of compassion, you then breathe out the suffering in the form of “white energy,” bringing goodness to those afflicted. 

You can practice tonglen formally in this way; however, many find tonglen challenging, so it’s best to practice under the guidance of a teacher. You can also, as the American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön suggests, practice “on the spot” when you are confronted with challenges in everyday life or are dealing with strong negative emotions.

Check out Pema Chödrön’s advice for practicing tonglen outside the meditation hall.

Make the jump here to read the original and more

The Long Road To Pride