The Way of Mindfulness
Now we come to the Way of Mindfulness (Satipatthana in the ancient Pali language), the Buddha’s great meditation that directly led to his all-encompassing enlightenment 2500 years ago. Only one man in historical [...]
Summary of Practices for Heightened Awareness
Chapter 1: • Watch posture and determine state of mind • Shift weight mindfully from right to left foot Chapter 2: • Count out-breaths to 50 (observe breaths – short, long, rough, smooth) • [...]
Final Word for Heightened Awareness
The true aim of spiritual practice is to ultimately culture mind, breaking the associative thinking pattern that results in the creation of innumerable attachments and the making of new karmas. This is what Patanjali, [...]
All Things Are As They Have Always Been
As soon as we have words we have concepts. No matter how articulate the speaker, how believable the teacher, using words forces the speaker to form concepts in order to convey ideas to [...]
General Instruction for T’ai Chi Chih
The movements, and their variations, that you are about to learn are the results of many years of experimentation. From a development of the original two movements shown me, adding the leg motions [...]
Provincialism
Provincialism seems to be the most universal characteristic among human beings; it even seems to supplant greed for the number one spot. It isn’t that we each think ours is the best way of [...]
Indian Buddhism
Indian Buddhism is really the key part of the course. Indian Buddhism today is taught only in Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, which used to be called Ceylon. You remember, when I talked [...]
Mantra & Breath Counting
MANTRA A Mantra is a special formula, a word or group of words possessed of great power. It represents a name or aspect of God, and was supposedly revealed to a sage in [...]
Heightened Awareness Epilogue
Those of us who are led to spiritual pursuits cannot usually explain why they interest us. If we did try, we might say that we are tired of the superficial in life and are [...]
The Grand Plan and the I Ching
Events continually happen to me as though some grand plan is being carried out. No matter how I try, I cannot seem to go against the shape of this plan. If one can flow [...]
Zen: Snowballs & Darts
Now we’re going to address Zen Buddhism, both Chinese and Japanese. You cannot have a logical exposition of Zen because Zen is not logical. What I’m going to try to do (and which I [...]
The Spiritual Side of Meditation
In order to fully appreciate the healing power of meditation, it is important that we understand the spiritual side as well as the physical and mental. Actually, the psyche is one; these three [...]