Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this introductory session on how to meditate, Christele guides newcomers through the foundational concepts and practices of Buddhist meditation. She opens with a breathing exercise and relaxation, then sets out the four-week curriculum covering the definition and purpose of meditation, motivation and posture, analytical and visualization techniques, and establishing daily practice. Through a group discussion, she clarifies what meditation is not—mere relaxation, affirmation, or daydreaming—and explains what it truly is: habituation of the mind to constructive, realistic views and emotions that lead to lasting happiness rather than temporary satisfaction through material means. Christele walks through key Buddhist principles including impermanence, karma, and delusion, then introduces the practical framework of study, reflection, and meditation practice. She teaches the two-wing approach combining wisdom (understanding reality) with compassion, and concludes with a guided ten-minute breathing meditation at the nostrils with mental counting. The session is designed for beginners entering the Discovering Buddhism program at Buddha House.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Christele – DB09_HowtoMed_wk1.mp3
UUID: 27d5d206-631f-4a2d-8023-29a24fd2cbad
Teacher: Christele
Collection: How to Meditate (Christele)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~5,949
Welcome to the second module of Discovering Buddhism on how to meditate. My name is Christelle and I am going to be your teacher for four weeks. First of all, thought I would give a summary of what meditation means and also we are going to go through the different topics we are going to go through during these four weeks. So meditation means habituating. If we want to make changes in our life, we will have to make changes in our way of thinking and our behavior.
When we meditate, we try to familiarize ourselves with new ways of thinking and behaving that help to cultivate greater wisdom, compassion and ability and this result in a healthier and happier life. So during these classes we learn session one which is today, the definition and purpose of meditation. Next week we will see the importance of motivation and dedication and how to sit in a proper meditation posture. And also we will go through the stabilizing meditation. On the twentieth of May, session three, we will go through the analytical meditation and visualization meditation.
Session four we will go through the common problems and the antidotes and the attitude of motivation and how to establish a daily practice. Today, I’m going to go into more detail. Can everybody see? So this is a schedule for today. We’re going to start with the breathing exercise and then we’ll do a short motivation and refuge prayer.
Actually, could you mind giving out the small yellow leaflet? And then we will do a meditation exercise. It’s single pointed exercise, a mindfulness exercise that uses the body as an object and then, thank you, then I’m going to divide you in small groups and you’re going to think of what you think you can get out of meditation, and then we’ll have brainstorming session. And then I will tell you what is meditation in Buddhism, and then we will do a breathing meditation exercise, and we will finish with dedication prayer. Okay?
So sit comfortably. And make sure that your back is straight but relaxed. Your hands are in your lap, on your knees, or your thigh. Whatever is most comfortable for you. Breathe a few times.
Deep in and out. Yeah. It’s a bit hard, You want the aircon or the window would be enough? If if you have the door, you can use. Okay.
Okay. So sit comfortably. Make sure that your back is straight and relaxed. Your hands are in your lap, on your knees or your thighs. Breathe a few times, deep in and out.
And every time you breathe out, you let go of all the tension you hold in your body and in your mind. Breathe out and let go everything that kept your mind busy today. Whatever has happened has happened. We can’t change anything from the past, so let it go. Breathe out and let go of all the worry about the future.
We create our future with our actions that we do in the present moment. The best preparation for the future is to be mindful of the present moment. The more we can practice this, the more control we get. Breathe out and let go of all the tension that is still left. Tension in your body.
Tension in your mind. Allow yourself to be completely here at Buddha House in the meditation hall, on the chair or cushion. Feel that there is no better place to be right now, that every part of your body and mind are happy to be here, and then just breathe. Breathe naturally and be aware of your body. Your body is breathing.
If you notice that your mind is wandering off, bring it back gently to the body. Bring the mind back to the body. Let the mind rest on the movements of the breath. Every time you breathe out, let go of tension. When you breathe in, you breathe in.
Just breathe. Nothing else. No thought. No emotions. No opinions.
Just breathe. Breathe. Your mind becomes more and more empty, and you enjoy the empty quiet space. Just stay in this space. And then allow yourself to come back to your body, to your senses.
And when you feel ready, you can slowly open your eyes. Yep. Oh, sorry. My mind moved up. So Yes.
Sorry. Yes. That’s right. Yeah. Is that better?
Does it make it Yeah. I know you. Yeah. You tend to not to speak as loudly as you. Yeah.
Okay. So everybody is here now. Good. Okay. So we’re going to give rise to good motivation.
That’s usually what we do in Buddhism. We always start the practice of the meditation with the motivation. So we all come here for different reasons. We like to meditate because maybe you are in pain, physical or emotional pain. We might feel that something is missing in our life.
Remember that Buddhism and therefore Buddhist meditation is not about fixing Samsāra, the temporary ups and downs of life. As long as we are under the control of delusions and karma, we will all experience the various ups and downs of saṃsāra. Buddhism and meditation is about waking up, becoming aware. Meditation is a tool that can help us to transform our mind and experience a completely different reality. A reality in which we are free of the suffering caused by the ups and downs of saṃsāra.
Side effects of engaging in meditation and transforming our minds can be less pain and discomfort, to be less discontent. So if you just want to still adopt your meditation posture, we just going to set up the motivation a bit more and then we will go directly into the refuge prayers for those who want to read the prayers with me. We are going to do the taking refuge and the four immeasurables and then we will go directly into another meditation exercise. So imagine imagine that you are surrounded by all the people of your life, your friends, your enemies, and strangers. Imagine that they are really here.
Bring this course with you, sharing the insight and understanding that you generate during this evening. Opening their heart and transforming their mind just as you open and transform your mind, connecting with the essence as you connect with you. Reflect on your reason for being here during this course. The motivating factor that moved you to register, to pay your course fee and make the effort to come here today. Reflect on what you want for yourself and for all those people of your life who are here in your imagination meditating with you.
Make a strong determination to keep an open mind, to achieve what you said I had to do both for yourself and for all these people of your life. I go for refuge to enlightenment. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly. In my practice of giving another perfection, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge to ultimate enlightenment.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly. From our practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge to ultimate enlightenment. The Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly. For my practice of giving and other perfection, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings.
May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from happiness and never free from suffering. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for friends and hatred for enemies. So the meditation we’re going to do now uses a body to train on mindfulness, and many relaxation exercise use this technique.
So make sure you’re still in a comfortable position again on a chair or a cushion. You can close your eyes. And I’m going to ask you to focus your awareness, your mind on different parts of the body. Sweeping down through the body, from the top of the head to the toes and fingers. As I mentioned, each part of the body, bring your attention there.
Let your mind rest on that particular part of the body and consciously relax that part, letting go of any tension that you may have. Begin with your head. Relax the top of your head. You can imagine that there is some space between the skin around your head and your skull. Relax your forehead.
Let go of any worry wrinkles that you may have in your forehead. Let them disappear. And relax your eyes, relax the muscles in your eyes, allow a little bit of light to come come into your eyes and relax the other muscles in your face, your nose and cheeks, your upper lip, your lower lip, your chin. Imagine that your face becomes soft and open. You are not afraid to be vulnerable to show who you really are.
Relax the sides of your head. Relax the back of your head. And bring your awareness to your brain and relax your brain. Let go of any worries or troubles and maybe putting pressure on your brain. Let go of any tension inside your head.
Make your head light as opposed to heavy and dark. Then let your awareness travel down to your throat and neck. Relax the throat. Give yourself permission to express your true nature, to show your softness and openness. Relax the muscle in the back of the neck.
Then let your awareness move down into your shoulder. Relax your shoulder. Let go of any burden and problem that you may be carrying on your shoulder. Let your awareness continue to travel down through your back. First, relax the upper back, the upper part of the back, your shoulder blade, the space in between the shoulder blade.
Imagine that there is space between the shoulder blade and the rib cage. They are not completely fixed. fixed against the rib cage. Then relax the middle part of the back. Then go to the lower back.
See that you are okay the way you are and that you fully support that. Then bring your awareness up to your to your chest. Relax your chest. Make the chest soft and go inside of your chest and relax your lungs. Make the chest so soft that you can imagine that the air flows directly in and out your lungs through your chest and your skin.
Your heart. Relax your heart. Your stomach, let any knot unwind. Then let the awareness travel down through the center of your body relaxing the internal organs, your liver, your kidneys, your pancreas, and your spleen. Relax all the muscles.
Relax all the abdomen, your intestine, and release any tension that you may have there. And let your awareness continue to move downwards and relax the muscle in your hips, your buttocks, the pelvic region. Then let your awareness travel down through both legs. Relax first the muscle in the upper parts of the leg. Then relax the knees.
And relax the calf muscle. Relax the ankles, the feet and the toes. You can imagine that your legs must become hollow tubes allowing energy to flow without any hindrance and eventually completely dissolving into light. Now go to Bring your awareness to the top of your shoulders. And let your awareness travel down both arms, relaxing the muscle in the upper part of the arm.
Then the elbow. Then the lower part of the arm. The wrist. And then the fingers.
Imagine again that they first become hollow tubes allowing energy to flow without any hindrance and eventually completely dissolving into light. We have gone through the entire body. Feel how every part is relaxed. Your body is light as opposed to heavy. And slowly, it feels like it is completely dissolving into light.
Allow that to happen, and that is your true nature. Now allow your mind to come back to your body. Remember that we still have a closed body with a head, a chest, and back, your stomach, arm, and leg. Feel the structure. Be present in the structure.
And when you feel ready, How do you feel after this meditation? Relax. Yeah. It’s a good meditation. It really okay.
And then four. Oh, and the five. Number five? Yes. What What do you think you can get out of meditation?
So what I like to do is to divide you in small group. I don’t know. Four or five maybe? What is more workable? What do you think?
Four or five? Yeah. And then I leave you ten minutes five, ten minutes. And then one speaker per group, and we can write it on the board, and we’ll check that. Okay?
Good. No. It’s not working. I don’t know. Okay.
Are we reading? Yes? And this is not working anymore, so sorry. I don’t know. Yeah.
There’s a bad connection. Oh, it’s working now. Good. Okay. Put it here.
So which group wants to start first? No volunteer? This group I’ve got the attention. So what do you think you can get out of meditation? Okay.
Well, that’s good. That’s a lot of things. So what I’m going going to do, I’m going to tell you what Buddhism is saying and this is all part. I mean what I can see, your goal here is to find happiness and to avoid suffering. Would that be fair to say that?
That’s what you’re looking for by having all these qualities and fixed? That’s what Buddhism says and I’m going to tell you what Lama Yeshe, who was here. I mean he passed away but he’s a founder of FPMT and Buddha House is part of FPMT. He says that from the beginning of human evolution on this planet, people have tried their best to be happy and to enjoy life. So the goal for most of us, I guess, all of us, I guess, we’ll talk about it after, is to be happy and to avoid suffering.
And what he said, Lama Yeshe, he said that we have developed an incredible amount of method to achieve this goal, the pursuit of happiness. And there is nothing wrong to develop this method to actually achieve this goal. The problem is that we see this method as having some inherent ability to satisfy us as being the cause of our happiness. And what Lord Buddha said, he said that it is impossible to find lasting happiness and satisfaction through the material means alone. And he just didn’t make that up.
He learned through experience. He tried them all and I’m sure that most of you have tried lots of method, maybe new car, plasma TV or whatever to try to attain this goal. If I’m wrong, please if you find something, let me know. Modern technology is good. Mean there’s nothing wrong with that and it can solve some physical problems.
You take medicine, you know this is useful. That’s going to help us. But it will not cure, a dissatisfied and undisciplined mind. And why is that? Why external things do not give us lasting happiness?
Physical matter is impermanent. That’s a very important one. Impermanent. Nothing lasts. Things nature changes and eventually disappear like our body, the new car, it’s going to get scratched.
You can get into a car accident. Your belongings, your environment, everything constantly changes. Buddhism says that all things are created by our karma and our delusions and therefore they are in a nature of suffering. And the feeling that we experience are not blissful. We experience a lot of suffering, dissatisfaction and discontentment.
And we don’t know how to change that into lasting happiness and stable happiness. Everything that we create with this imperfect mind is therefore imperfect by nature and will therefore not give us perfect bliss but instead dissatisfaction and discontentment. So trying to feed desire with Trying to feed desire and satisfy the dissatisfied mind with something that is constantly changing its hopeless. It’s impossible. Desire is an afflictive emotion and its nature is dissatisfaction.
So there’s no way to satisfy the uncontrolled mind through material means. In our search for happiness, what we do, we’re going to try different things, as I say. We’re going to have different interests. That can be gardening, I don’t know, sports. We can try some different jobs too.
Thinking of the next one, the next one is bringing more money is going to make us happy and we go and do the next job and we realize, Oh, I’m not that happy. I want something more. We’re going to try different technology. A new computer, new TV, new car. We might even try to find happiness with different religions.
As I said, there’s nothing wrong with that and I mean you’re welcome to have some bubbles if you want to. I’m sure there’s also ways that you’re trying to reach this goal. So what we do, we also turn to meditation to reach this goal. Meditation to reach this goal and we have heard that it might increase our level of happiness. So in listening and reflecting on the material presented in this module, is important that we check if and how meditation can help us finding lasting happiness.
Lord Buddha said, Do not believe me. Experience it and test it for yourself. So now what is meditation? So is that fair? I mean, that okay.
Actually, I’d like you to tell me the difference that you see between meditation and relaxation. Because most of the time these two activities are confused. So anybody who wants to Sorry? Relaxation. Distraction from the suffering or for your from your problems?
No. Okay. Sorry. Can you repeat that? Facilitate an uncontrolled mind.
Relaxation? Yeah. Yep. Can allow for Fantasy. Yeah.
Yeah. So for and that’s yeah? That’s what you want to say? Fantasy? Yeah.
Is that what you Good. So meditation is sometimes confused with other activities, but I can tell you you got a very good idea of what meditation is. So meditation is often confused with other activities like simply relaxing the body and the mind. Affirmation techniques like you imagine that you’re a successful person and you visualize that with wonderful possession and good family relationship, daydreaming, about our object of attachment, spacing out or running away, developing psychic powers, a great vehicle to get high and a quick fix. So this is not that meditation.
So what is meditation? Well, Lama Yeshe said this is the right medicine for the uncontrolled, undisciplined mind and this is the way to perfect satisfaction. I wanted to do my bubble again. Roger is going to tell you. So that’s so that’s the right medicine.
Do you want me to write it down or yeah? I might remove that, but no. But you got it right. So let’s So this is a right medicine for the uncontrolled mind. It’s a mental activity, and that’s what you said here.
Lama Yeshe says the way to perfect satisfaction. And it’s understanding the nature of your psychological phenomena. It’s knowing how the internal world function to your mind. I’ll put it right here too. Annoying.
It is also subduing mind and bringing it to the right understanding of reality. And I guess that’s supposed to somebody calls the truth. Okay. So meditation is an activity of the mental consciousness. Does anybody did the module number one on the mind or most of you know?
Anybody who did not? Yeah. Okay. So I was just going to explain quickly. The mind can be divided into two category.
Consciousnesses, sense consciousness, and the mental consciousness. The sense consciousness, that’s your eye consciousness. So the side, now you see the shape, color, the form. The ear, the hearing, the sense that you hear, the nose which is a smell, the odor, the tongue which is a test and the body consciousness which is when you touch something if it’s soft or hard and also all the information that we receive from our muscle and our internal organs. So that is sense consciousness.
The mental consciousness, there’s different level, there’s the growth level of experience, the gross level I should say. So in this category, there’s going to be your emotions, the positive and the negative emotions like anger, attachment, jealousy, love, compassion. That’s a growth level. There’s And also the intellectual processes. So that’s your wisdom, your concentration, discrimination, ignorance, etc.
And then you go into more subtle experience. And here you’ve got stillness and clarity. So why are we doing meditation? Meditation happens here in mental consciousness. So in order to meditate well and especially as beginner, we need a quiet space.
So we need no information for the ear consciousness. We close our eye, so we’ve got no information for the eye consciousness. We make sure there’s no wind if it’s not too cold or too hot. So no information for the body body consciousness. We don’t wear perfume.
No information for the nose consciousness. Just example I’m taking. And we don’t eat during meditation. So no information for the tongue consciousness. Consciousness.
So we try not to stimulate this sense consciousness so we can have better access to this one Or better listen what’s going on here. Because what happens during the day, we constantly react to that. We see something, we don’t like it, here we go. We make a whole scenario about how we hate this thing and what is it here, etcetera. So we want to avoid reacting to that.
So what meditation does, it helps to transform the mental consciousness. So that after a while, we’re not going to react as much to the sense consciousness. So that’s going to decrease the reaction. This consciousness has actually got three levels, but under here. The gross one, the subtle, and the extremely subtle.
When this thing has more subtle experiences. So here actually here and here, the sense conscious and and most of the time, this is what we experience. We experience the sense consciousness and we going to experience that. I mean, there is emotion. Everybody knows that we experience that during the day, all the time, even during the night.
During meditation, we can learn to access and transform the subtle level of consciousness eventually we will also like to access the extremely subtle level of consciousness and this extremely subtle level of consciousness we have no control over that, over this level. I mean we don’t really access that. The only time we can notice this extremely subtle level of consciousness is with a trained mind and also during sleep, at the time of death, an orgasm or sneezing. But we can’t actually we can’t even notice that because we actually need to be trained when we sneeze and we dream. So what is meditation in Buddhism?
Is that clear or any question at this point or no? So the Tibetan word for meditation? I think you’re right. We should ask Rodrigo, but that should be. Yeah.
And this mean, do you have it checked? To familiarize. This one comes in. So we’re going to familiarize ourselves with another way of sinking so that we can change our habitual tendency that causes us to suffer. We’re going to change our way of thinking.
That’s what Buddhist meditation does. So for instance, we have heard about karma and that killing is a cause of suffering and that it will lead to a short lifespan. We can experience disease, not finding the right doctor or medicine when we are ill and let’s say you like fishing. So there’s going to be a conflict here and you feel that fishing is actually bringing you happiness and peace of mind in your life. So with Buddhist meditation, you’re going to familiarize yourself with the the result of killing on a deeper level so you can give up fishing.
Does it make sense? So the way you’re going to do that is a three stage training. You’re going to listen to some teaching. You’re going to reflect on the teaching and come to some understanding and some conclusion, and then you’re going to meditate. The reason of these three stages of training is that every moment of mind has an object, a focused object and if you don’t know the teachings of the object that you’re meditate upon, meditation can be just a mere spacing out, drifting off and it’s hard to give the mind direction.
It’s as if you want to I’m going to take footy. We’re in Australia. Let’s say you want to play footy. What are you going to do? First of all, you’re going to look for a good teacher.
I mean, trainer. Then you’re going to learn the rules. You’re going to reflect on the rules, and then you must start playing. This is a sad thing here. As I said earlier, Śākyamūni Buddha said, do not believe me.
Please experience before you apply anything. So without reflecting in your mind or discussion with other students, the meaning of the teachings, you are not sure if you understand them correctly. So you need to be sure that what you’re going to meditate upon, you understand it correctly. So what are you going to habituate your mind to? To a constructive, realistic, and beneficial views, emotion, and attitude.
The negative aspect, negative in Buddhism mean that it’s going to make us suffer of the mind. So delusions, jealousy, anger, desire, pride arise from a misunderstanding of reality and our habitual clinging to the way we see things. So is that clear at this point? Yeah. So there’s two wings in this process.
It’s not about flying. You need two wings. We’re going to develop the compassion wing and the wisdom wing. We’re going to train these two. This one is also beneficial emotions.
And attitude, for example, love, compassion. The wisdom wing is a thought and view that correspond to reality. Like impermanence, emptiness, karma. So when you combine the two wings, you’re going to have more compassionate thoughts and more realistic attitude towards reality. So I’m going to take an example.
You see an angry person. You’ll be able to also see his or her suffering. On the basis of this, compassion will arise in your mind and you will develop the thought, I wish or she was free of suffering. And you develop this two wings. By knowing impermanence, you don’t get so upset when something you cherish breaks because you understand that by nature all things are impermanent.
The two wings come together. We have a more compassionate attitude. We have a more realistic attitude towards reality. The nature of our mind is more. The more you understand the nature of reality that it is in the nature of suffering, the more compassion will arise in your mind.
With meditation, we can recognize the mistakes in our thoughts and attitude. As a mistake and negativity in Buddhism is just that it’s going to create suffering. And we’re going to adjust our mind to think and react more realistically and more honestly. So basically we’re going to build good habits of the mind and what’s going to happen, your behavior in daily life will change gradually, not in one time. So your humor, your anger, you’re going to notice it’s going to decrease.
Decrease. So you might you must get angry but at least you might see it arising and you’ll have some tool to deal with it. You’re going to have more clarity in your mind and we can make more wise decision and we’re going to have a less dissatisfied and restless life and mind. So by developing your meditation technique, we can become more and more familiar with how our mind works. We can see the nature of our delusions which is that they are by nature dissatisfactory.
We can learn to recognize the natural spaciousness of our mind and we begin to solve our own problem. We have fewer unrealistic expectation of people and the thing around us. As a result, less disappointment, relationship improve and and life become more stable and satisfying. But as I said, it doesn’t just happen like that. Lifelong habits die hard.
Sorry. Not a quick fix. I told you at the beginning. So yeah, improving our mind is a slow and gradual process. It is a matter of ridding ourselves bit by bit of instinctive harmful habitual patterns and become familiar with habits that necessarily bring positive results to ourselves and others.
Some teachers say that often the benefits of meditation come later in life. It is not immediate. I also heard it’s like a washing machine, you know. You put a cloth full of stains. First of all, you need to get very dirty because you need to get all the stains out.
The water is very dirty. So that’s what happened. When you do meditation, you can wash your mind. Need to get rid of all the stains before. So in our society, the problem is that usually we want instant happiness.
And we’re not going to get it from meditation. What you need to have is actually a longer view to make real changes. But at the same time, you’re going to see some improvement in a weeks or months. Took the example of the anger that you’re going to notice it arising in your mind and you’re going to apply the technique to change your attitude towards anger and prevent it from becoming too big. There’s different technique for example you can imagine a sky and dark clouds.
So the clouds are actually your anger and you just let them pass and you concentrate on the clarity of your mind. You can invite the anger on the bench next to you and say, Okay, you’re here. I know. Thank you. Stay here and just leave whenever you want.
So yeah, you become more mindful of the signs of anger arising. You stop you you put some distance between you and the anger when you’re able to see it, and you do not identify with it. And it’s to arrive to your goal with this stabilizing meditation is a nine stage process. Mhmm. And to arrive at the Shamatha stage, as you’re going to go somewhere in life, you can care for that.
And that’s the right Okay. So we’re going to finish with the breathing meditation. And that’s the exercise that that I’m going to ask you to do every day if you can. Mhmm. For ten, fifteen minutes in the morning.
It’s better in the morning, but if you don’t have time, then that’s okay. And if you can’t do ten minutes, do only five minutes. So straighten your back and make sure that you sit comfortably. You can close your eyes or you can let a little bit of light come into your eyes. Focus your attention on your breathing.
Breathe naturally. Just focus on the mind, the rising and falling of your shoulders and chest as you inhale and exhale gently. Allow your mind to settle and become calm and present, ready to engage in meditation. Think that you are not meditating, that you are meditating not just for your own individual benefit, but you are taking the time now to meditate and develop your mind to become a wiser and kinder person, able to benefit all sentient beings. Start by focusing your attention at the opening of the nostril.
Pay attention to the very subtle sensation as you breathe in and out through your nose. You can feel certain sensation as the air passes, as the small hairs move, cooler sensation as you inhale, warmer as you exhale. Don’t follow the air into your body or add into the surrounding environment. Place your attention on the sensations associated with the breath at the opening of your nostril. Your job is to keep your attention firmly placed on those sensations only.
As you inhale and exhale, mentally count each inhalation and exhalation together as one. Count from one to ten, concentrating on those sensations. When you reach ten begin again at one. If you become distracted with the mind wander towards the scene and move away from the point of concentration, then begin again at one. Even if you never get past two, it is not a problem.
The point is to train your mind to focus on one point only. This concentration can take some practice to attain. We’re going to do that for the next ten minutes. If your mind wanders, bring your attention back at the opening of your nostril. Okay.
Arrive, just bring them on. We’re going to we’re going to finish with the dedication prior on the yellow. Leaflet. Then I’ve got a few things to tell you for the coming weeks. Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the enlightened state of the Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state.
That is Supreme bodhicitta, may it arise and grow. And may there be no other reasons, not diminish, to increase more and more. Outside, there’s two pages. There’s one which is what is meditation, a small summary and the breathing exercise we just did. Also a little timetable like that with the homework.
Everybody’s got the required reading on how to meditate. So what I’d like you to do is to read page five, The Purpose of Meditation by Lama Zopa Rinpoche which is spiritual director of Buddha House and all the FPMT centers in the world. So they say in the morning, the preference but I know we’re always very busy. So first you set up a good motivation, why you want to do this meditation and next we will go through the motivation but basically the higher the goal, the better it is and followed by ten to fifteen minutes awareness of the breath. So focus on the nostril as we did.
Count from one to ten. If you can’t arrive to ten, that’s fine. If your mind wander at one or two, that’s okay. You bring it back to one. Okay?
It’s normal. So it’s going to be to arrive. Okay? It’s just a question of focusing your mind on one point. And yeah.
And I’ll I put in the evening also five minutes. Anyway, for the people who want to do more. Also, I don’t know if Jamyang told you that the meditation day was on the sixth of June. It’s actually been changed to the thirteenth of June. Okay.
So sorry about that. Is it a weekend? No. Only Saturday from ten to five. And Geshe Pema Tsering will come and teach for I think an hour and a half.
I should have some program somewhere here. And we’re going to go through all the meditations. It’s going to be very practical day and also there’ll be question and answer and just a summary of the main point that we covered. And there’ll be lunch. Does he ever teach during the weekday?
He’s got plenty of teaching. He teaches on Tuesday night, Thursday night, and Sunday morning. Yeah. There’s a program outside if you want to. Have a look.
And that’s it. Thank you. Thank you.