To soar effortlessly, the mighty eagle needs two wings. One is just not enough. My teacher Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche often said this to illustrate, that a sublime balance of mind is needed when facing challenges, both from outside and from inside oneself. In good times and bad times, a much coveted secret is how to maintain an even keel, no matter what happens.
An invitation to broaden our understanding of mindfulness by looking at the original sources, the importance of ethics and our intention. Includes a discussion on how mindfulness teachers can upgrade their skills.
Often we look for healing outside of ourselves, for someone who can fix us or heal us. But in looking outside of ourselves, we give our own inner healing power away, leaving us unempowered instead of empowered. In essence, we can only heal ourselves; no one can do that for us, not even a Buddha. Someone can show us the way or can be a facilitator, but we still have to do the hard work ourselves.
If you are meditating to go beyond mindfulness, seeking insights, vipassana, then I recommend sitting for more than an hour because your mind needs time to let go, and then the really interesting things start.
Accepting ourselves is like placing ourselves and our issues in an open hand, the open hand of acceptance. For example, when we have a disease, we often fight with it and this creates worry, fear, and anger; this kind of fighting is a struggle between us and the disease.
Inventing a personal version of how our spiritual nature is, reality, oneness, non-duality, like making a wedding cake, being so proud of my enlightened ideas. It’s a trip, it’s absurd, and it’s ultimately wasted efforts.
The Tibetans have a saying; You will have to stand for a very long time with your mouth wide open before a roasted partridge will fly into it. It is a rather droll way of expressing high levels of improbability.
5 powerful tips and exercises for coping with life as an empath by grounding, love and insights to change our mindset and our energetic behavior patterns.
Visualization is powerful technique we can use to transform our mind and experience. To visualize is to imagine and create images in the mind.
Two different people will view the same situation quite differently according to their unique personal reference of experiences and values. This shows that our judgments are relative to our way of thinking.
Even with the best of intentions to generate compassion, there are ways we go astray by deluding ourselves. This becomes apparent when, instead of feeling nurtured by offering compassion in thought or deed, we are left with the bitter taste of negative emotion.
Direct experience cannot be expressed intellectually; we cannot point out to someone what is indescribable: their true identity. Yet the teacher can facilitate the space in which the student can rediscover this in a direct experience, without words or symbolic language.
Although we can acknowledge that all which exists are in an eternal process of change, we can still get overwhelmed by the fear of losing life and the need to say goodbye to people we love and those who have been an important part in our life by making it precious.
Of course, everyone can agree that on the one hand, being in love is a very superficial thing. A process where you are possibly so full of your own projections that you don’t even really see the other person. But on the other hand, it’s something very real in the sense that it really makes you do your best.
The shieldless naked heart is the amour of the true warrior. The very moment we take a step back from what we call ourselves and allow room enough in the field of experience, this inner spaciousness is the most wonderful medicine against fear, claustrophobia and the timidity of dualistic mind.
Sitting with the unknown may arouse a variety of experiences. fear and anxiety. Excitement and adventure. It may even evoke a sense of awe, halting our running mind. Whatever the reaction there is one thing for sure, our life is pervaded by it. It lies beneath our thin facade of control.
Listen to your favorite piece of music. It is not your ears that hear, but your consciousness. Usually we think that we hear better by concentrating and focusing, but it is only apparently true. We hear much better by staying unoccupied.
Today, on a very special day, I want to share for the first time in English, some words from a real saint and true of master of freedom. Just thinking of him brings tears to my eyes and my heart aches to realize the awakened state completely. His name was Adeu Rinpoche.
We can test this out at our own pace, that lowering defenses opens up to acknowledging the deeper and more basic strength of this insight: that spaciousness cannot be hurt.
There is a point in meditation training, after having developed a sense of calm and being able to remain consciously present, where the need of yielding personal territory is unavoidable, inescapable.
The early morning, before the light of the day arrives, offers a space where the body is resting in a wonderful way. The mind is still free of all the objects from the illuminating daylight. In that space we find a little wonder: no stress, no activity and sometimes even thought-free awareness.