Category Archives: Meditation

Online Dharma Teachings in April

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Two Tibetan meditation masters whose teachings I follow have scheduled extensive online learning and practice sessions in April. They are free and appropriate for both beginners and those more experienced in meditation.

Anam Thubten: Immersion in Awareness.

Anam has a gift for making complex concepts and practices accessible to all. In addition, no particular belief system is required, nor does the study of Awareness contradict the tenets of any spiritual tradition. He will host four online presentations on the four Sundays in April. Click here for more details and login information.

Schedule: (California time)
10:00 am -10:45 am: Guided meditation
11:00 am – 11:45 am: Dharma Talk

April 5:           Taming the Mind
April 12:         Responding from a Higher Intelligence
April 19:         Inviting the Shadow
April 25:         Celebrating Existence

 

Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche also focuses on Awareness practice and will host three teaching sessions on the first three Saturdays in April, from 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm Pacific time. In addition, he will lead guided meditations on Wednesday evenings  throughout the month.

How to Have a Pristine Mind in Challenging Times. April 4.  Register here.

The Time for Dzogchen is Now. April 11. Register here.

Padmasambhava’s Teachings on Turning Obstacles Into Allies. April 18. Register here.

Weekly Guided Meditations, Wednesdays, 7:00 pm – 7:45 pm, beginning April 8.  Register here.

If you’ve been wanting to begin or continue a meditation practice during this time when we’re all sequestered, I cannot think of a better way to proceed!

Updated Online Meditation and Teaching Opportunities

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“Flags of Triund,” by Rama-gu, CC-BY-2.0

“Time for Bodhisattvas. In Buddhist teachings, the Bodhisattva is someone who vows to alleviate suffering and brings blessings in every circumstance.
A Bodhisattva chooses to live with dignity and courage and radiates compassion for all, no matter where they find themselves

This is not a metaphor. As Bodhisattvas we are now asked to hold a certain measure of the tragedy of the world and respond with love.”

– Jack Kornfield – The Bodhisattva Response to Corona Virus.

Here are some practice opportunities presented by three lamas for whom I have the greatest respect, and whose teachings form the core of my own spiritual practice:

Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche: This is a recording of Chowang Rinpoche’s talk of March 21 on two profound protection mantras for times of epidemic disease. This includes details and authorization to practice the “Vajra Armor Mantra,” given by Guru Padmasambhava, for times of epidemic. It also has a link to register for his upcoming talk, scheduled for Saturday, March 28 at 1:00 pm, PDT, on the subject of, “How to Find Happiness and Meaning at Home,” as in our current state of practicing social distance.

Anam Thubten: Here are recordings of the guided meditations and dharma talks that Anam presented on March 15 and March 22. There will be no talk this Sunday, but will resume on April 5.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche: This is the latest edition of his quarterly newsletter, The Voice of Clear Light, covering a number topics, including a three day online retreat, “Discovering the Melody of Silence,” scheduled for Friday through Sunday, April 3-5. His retreats are superb, and accessible for people of all levels of experience. His cyber-sangha has members from around the world.

Online Teaching and Meditation Practice Opportunities

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All of the Buddhist sanghas I normally connect with have suspended physical practice sessions and retreats while shifting to an even richer menu of online teachings. Here are some of special interest:

Healing & Protection Mantra Meditation for When Disease Spreads in the World. Saturday, March 21, from 1:00 – 2:15 pm Pacific Time, via Livestream.

“Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche will be teaching on ancient mantras from the treasure teachings of the Vajrayana tradition. In this tradition, there is a long history of practitioners using these powerful mantras, meditations, and visualizations to help when people are sick and when diseases are spreading.”

These are practices given by Padmasambhava, “the second buddha,” who brought the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha to Tibet in the 8th century. I met Chowang Rinpoche during a retreat last September and have tuned into his online teachings since then. Details and free registration here.

Guided meditations and dharma talks by Anam Thubten, Sundays from 10:00am – 12:00 pm, via Livestream.  Go to https://www.dharmata.org/memberstream/ Login using guest as both Username and Password. We are advised to login around 9:45. Last week, due (I assume) to a large number of logins, it took a while to connect, so patience and an early start are suggested.

Weekly guided meditations and dharma talks by Anam Thubten, Sundays from 10:00am – 12:00 pm, via Livestream. Those who have followed this blog for a while will recall other posts on Anam Thubten, the first Tibetan lama I met during a retreat about 15 years ago, and who was the single greatest influence in turning my spiritual practice in this direction.

Now that his center in Richmond, CA is closed and retreats cancelled for an indefinite future, these practices and talks will be available to everyone, not just members of the Dharmata Sangha. Details here.

Guidance for using social distancing time for an at-home retreat. Thanks to Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach for these suggestions. This is a practice I have found valuable in the past, and it’s certainly timely now!

Online resources from Tricycle, the Buddhist Review. In an email they say:

“One doesn’t have to be Buddhist to know that ignoring difficult problems or thoughts doesn’t make them go away. Or that when panic sets in, people tend not to make the best decisions. Or that the things we treasure won’t be around forever. Or that no matter how alone we may feel, we are always part of something bigger. Or that we are at our best when we take care of each other. But Buddhist teachings place these ideas at the fore, and ask us to keep them in mind when we are otherwise prone to get swept up in our day-to-day tasks.
…………
We have been speaking to Buddhist teachers and writers who have been thinking about the coronavirus outbreak. They’ve shared their reflections, advice, and practices for dealing with the uncertainty and fear that have arisen around this disease. We have the privilege of being able to share those with you here. We are offering free access to these and other select articles to support your practice during this uncertain time.”

Stay safe and stay tuned as I share more of these links as they come in.

An End of the Year Post

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Saturday Evening Post New Years cover for 1911

I’ve never been fond of traditional old-fart-and-baby News Years iconography, but this one, from a 109 year old magazine cover, will serve as a decent illustration of the major theme of 2019 for me – Impermanence.

All the spiritual traditions I know anything about warn us not to store up treasures on earth, as Jesus put it. Krishna told Arjuna that this world is full of delusion. Buddha placed impermanence at the center of his teaching. All of us long for permanent happiness he said, but we simply cannot find it in world where everything changes.

Students of Buddha’s teachings learn from the start to reflect on impermanence, but it can be a long way from reflection in the head to really getting it at gut level.

This year, much of my  energy, focus, and gut level concern was centered on heart health issues both for Mary, and for Kit, our oldest dog. With great joy I can say that both are doing well at year’s end, but it will never be as easy for me to forget those proverbial “sands in the hour glass” as it was a year ago.

Unlike what you hear in superficial comments, Buddha never said that permanent happiness was impossible – he simply said we won’t find it where we usually look. We have to search within, he said, and that means meditation. Unfortunately, too many people believe that meditation is either not relevant or not possible for them, or both. One of the best events for me in 2019 was encountering a teacher who presents one of Buddhism’s most profound practices in a straightforward and accessible manner. He is committed to making these teachings widely available.

I’ve posted here before about Anam Thubten, a Tibetan lama for whom I have the highest regard. I encountered Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche at a daylong retreat in September, where Anam introduced him as a colleague and “meditation master.”

Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche is offering, through his organization, a free 100 Day New Year’s Meditation Challenge, with online teaching and support. It is designed for everyone, with or without meditation experience.

And that brings me to the final point of this post, for I put the details of this meditation challenge on the “new” blog I’ve been threatening to start for a while. I launched on December 21, the day of the Winter Solstice.

The blog is called Soul Notes. Please stop by to check it out, and especially this description of Chowang Rinpoche’s meditation challenge.

Happy New Year!

An End of Year Blessing from Anam Thubten

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I wrote a number of posts about Anam Thubten in the early years of this blog. Not so many lately, though that may change in the future.

I’ve followed his teachings for the last dozen years – via his books, his daylong retreats in Sacramento (which happen about once a year), and his recorded talks on the Dharmata Foundation website.

His profound gift is his ability to present some of the oldest and most revered teachings in Tibetan Buddhism in clear and accessible terms to audiences around the world.

In this interview, posted on Buddistdoor.net on December 20, he shared some of his suggestions and hopes for the coming year:

As we bid farewell to 2018 and move into the New Year of 2019, Rinpoche deeply wishes that we all meditate, regardless of spiritual belief or affiliation, and to commit to looking inward. “There are lots of wonderful teachers. And they can be regular people…as long as they have a good heart.” 

The world is in a new period of uncertainty, and the energy of the globe is shifting unpredictably. In this context Rinpoche believes that the words “optimism” and “pessimism” are not helpful. “I wouldn’t say that we should be optimistic in the sense we try to shut off our minds and tell ourselves everything is hunky-dory. Yet too much pessimism leads to paralysis, and is an excuse for inaction. What we need is hope, an attitude of transformation and dealing with the urgent issues facing us. I’d like to have hope and faith in humanity rather than optimism.”

Winter Feast for the Soul, 2018

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The Winter Feast for the Soul, now in it’s 11th year, is a 40 day, worldwide online meditation intensive that encourages people to begin or deepen a spiritual practice. Instructors from all spiritual traditions suggest simple practices that fit into the schedules of busy people.

I am delighted to see that Anam Thubten, the Tibetan master who inspired me to explore this tradition a dozen years ago, continues to be an active participant. On his page, you can listen to simple but profound guided meditations he recorded for the Feast in 2016 and 2017.

Anam Thubten

I encourage everyone who is interested to explore this rich practice opportunity!

Silence, Stillness

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Wawona, Ca, Nov., 2017

If we have a bit of quiet time and pay attention at the turning of the year, we can feel a pause in the world and rest there.

It’s easier to experience this in the natural world, but what we truly long is a place of rest that is always available, unconditionally, a place we can visit any time, that won’t let us down. We only find this kind of refuge within.

Wawona, CA, Nov. 2017

Anam Thubten, a Tibetan Buddhist master insists that the simplest ways of meditation, though not easy, are are among the most profound:

“Try this. Pay attention to your breath in silence. Look at your mind. Immediately we see that thoughts are popping up. Don’t react to them. Just keep watching your mind. Notice that there is a gap between each thought. Notice that there is a space between the place where the last thought came to an end and the next one hasn’t yet arrived. In this space there is no ‘I’ or ‘me.’ That’s it.” (No Self, No Problem, 2009).

The “it” he refers to is the true nature of awareness – what we really are. The image given is the clear sky, unaffected by anything passing through it, just as clear, open awareness is not affected by any of the passing contents of consciousness.

Wawona, CA, Nov, 2017

Elsewhere, Anam Thubten gives this instruction: “Rest and let everything be as it is.”

Few of us can follow guidance like that without prior practice and the guidance of an experienced teacher. So what are we to do?

Wawona, CA, Nov., 2017

Chögyam Trungpa (1939 – 1987) was one of the first Tibetan Buddhist teacher to settle and teach in this country. A master in the same lineage as Anam Thubten, he left us a practice for working with the breath as a focus for meditation that is both simple and profound.

We place our attention on the outgoing breath, letting any tension flow out with it. At the end of the out breath, we let go and rest. We rest without effort in the gap between out breaths, knowing that the in breath takes care of itself. This cycle of focus and rest, effort and letting go, will lead our thoughts and distractions to settle sufficiently to be able to follow Anam Thubten’s instruction and simply “rest and let everything be as it is.”

Wawona, CA, Nov, 2017

There are other ways to find the place of clarity and stillness within – this is one that works for me.

Wawona, CA, Nov. 2017

I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Notes from 2017: A Winter Feast for the Soul

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Lotus flowers. Public domain.

Lotus flowers. Public domain.

The aphorisms in my previous post, on causes of happiness and unhappiness, are simple to say and understand, but not very easy to put into practice in the “thick of things.” I think that’s why the Dalia Lama speaks of practicing compassion – what we need to do to become skilled at anything.

At the same time, Buddhists believe compassion is part of our innermost nature, but it’s buried under the detritus of day to day living. That’s one reason why a core image is the lotus flower, which eventually blooms in original purity, but only after rising from the mud in which it germinates.

To aid in such practice, an international and multi-denominational contemplative practice begins tomorrow, Sunday January 15, A Winter Feast for the Soul. The event began about 10 years ago, and the intro page outlines the mission as:

  1. To support individuals in experiencing the benefits of establishing a daily spiritual practice.
  2. To create a global community of individuals committed to sustaining a daily spiritual practice for 40 days from January 15 to February 23 each year.
  3. To honor all forms of spiritual practice and to make them welcome to our Winter Feast for the Soul. These include meditation, yoga, tai chi, chi gong, journaling, reading spiritual texts from all traditions and philosophies.

One of the teachers participating is Anam Thubten, a Tibetan master I’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog. Here is his statement on why this is so important, especially at this critical time. Please have a look, and follow the link to the site, given above, to learn more and to register..