Meditation practices and developing clarity. Gutenstein Retreat, 2009
The retreat was organized around meditation explanations and instructions together with their background view, followed by periods of practice and questions. The focus was on experiencing kadag, the primordial purity of the mind.
James Low
Gutenstein Retreat, Austria
15-17 May 2009
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Transcribed by Jo Féat
Edited by Barbara Terris
Extract
Question: How do I know when to do what practice?
James: Well, we probably all have potato peelers at home; their function is to remove potato skin. I like peeling potatoes very much but if I have beautiful small, new potatoes I wouldn’t want to peel them. No matter how beautiful your potato peeler is, it is useless in relation to new potatoes. In the Tibetan tradition they have very many different kinds of ‘potato peelers’…
Practice is a means to an end. It is not an end in itself, since whatever is established with effort, will succumb to the force of change.
Contents
- Shamatha, shiné or ‘staying peacefully’
- Vipassana meditation: lessening the power of projection
- Establishing emptiness through analysis
- Pure from the very beginning: kadag
- Establishing emptiness through direct experience
- Sounding Three Aa s
- Meditation practices for when you are distracted
- Purity free of stain
- Purity inseparable from manifestation: more on kadag
- Visualising Aa with rainbow light