Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Rather than a dharma talk, this 59-minute session opens the 2008 Easter Retreat with guided meditation led by Geshe Pema Tsering at Buddha House — two consecutive half-hour sits to settle the mind before formal teachings begin. The first period works through a body scan: attention moves from the rising and falling abdomen outward through every region of the body, observing sensations as they arise and dissolve without judgment or engagement. After a brief stretch, Geshe Pema Tsering guides a motivation-setting reflection — counting the causes and conditions that made attendance possible, recognising the kindness behind each, and resolving to use whatever is learned to benefit those same people. The session closes with a Śākyamūni Buddha visualisation: white light pours through the crown, purifying obscurations, before the figure dissolves entirely into the practitioner.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 2008 03 23 Meditation.mp3
UUID: 427644fd-80fb-4b4b-ab88-b9da11f39141
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Easter Retreat (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2008-03-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 59.0 minutes
Words: ~2,171
Thanks, good to be here. So it’s gonna start the day with a meditation just to let go of everything that we have been doing in the last week or weeks and making our minds ready for the teachings. Yeah. So we’ll do maybe two times half an hour with a little break where you can stretch if you need to, but you can also just stay in the meditation. Is that okay?
Is this your oh, you know how to meditate. Is anybody completely new to meditation? No? Okay. Good.
I’ll go through through the posture just to remember. And it is always good when you start a meditation to check your posture again and again because when our meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings get better, we might change adjust the posture. When we have a good day, a bad day, our posture might be slightly different. So the main thing is that our back is straight. So if you sit on the cushion, make sure that you sit high enough so that your back naturally straightens up.
If you sit on a chair, make sure that you’re not leaning backwards. If you sit against the pew, make sure you don’t sit against it. Yeah. And then you can focus on the on your lower back, maybe on your sacrum, and try to find that posture where your back naturally straightens up. And you can imagine that you see your vertebrae.
They’re like little blocks. And from the bottom, you move your awareness upwards your spine, and you imagine that you straighten that you put them on top of each other, a nice pile of vertebrae. And you move up all the way to your neck. Maybe while you do that, you already feel that your muscles are relaxing. Relaxing.
And when you have checked your whole back, drop your shoulders. Relax your stomach. You don’t have to hold your back straight. Your back is naturally straight. And then you can put your hands on your lap.
You can put your right hand on top of the left and the thumbs slightly touching each other. Elbows are a little bit away from the body. Whether you have them on your lap or on your thighs. Your head a little bit bent forward as if you are looking to the floor two meters in front of you. If you’re in the chair, maybe three meters in front of you.
Your mouth, your jaws are relaxed. Your tongue is touching the palate and your eyes are closed but relaxed. You can even allow a little bit of light to come into your eyes to make sure that we don’t fall asleep, to wake up the mind. And then go through that posture yourself. Check all the points, your back, your arms, your head, your mouth, your tongue, your eyes.
And then bring your awareness to your stomach where you can observe the rising and falling of your abdomen every time you breathe in and breathe out. Try to breathe naturally. Don’t put any effort in it. And it is as if your mind rests on the breath. Allow all your energy to rest on the breath.
And you can imagine that you bring your energy into this kumbha, into your body. Stomach. By letting go that part of your mind that is still caught up in what you have been doing or what has happened to you in the past, the last week or before that. Try to let go of that past. There’s nothing that you can do about that.
We can’t change it. And then bring that energy to your body, to your breath. Maybe part of your mind is already running off to the future. Maybe you have something something coming up that is important for you. Try that energy that is engaging already in the future.
Try to bring that here to your body, to your breath. Allow your mind to completely relax, to completely let go. And if you notice that your mind gets distracted, just bring it gently back to the movements of the abdomen. And let it rest on your breath. If we can bring our mind to our body, we know that mind is in the present moment because our body is always in the present moment.
Our body is never in the past and is never in the future. And bring your awareness to your thighs and just observe what kind of feelings arise from your thighs, from your skin, from your muscles, from other tissues. You just observe the feelings. You don’t follow them. You don’t judge them.
You don’t engage in them. You just see them for what they are, feelings that arise and then dissolve back into the mind. And bring your awareness to your knees and observe what feelings arise from them. Go to your shins. Your feet.
Your toes, and see if you can observe different feelings arising from all the different toes. Tip of your toes. The soles of your feet, and allow feelings to arise. Don’t try to stop them. Push them away.
Allowing feelings to rise can feel like opening up your feet. And go to your ankles. Your calf muscles. And, again, allow any feeling to arise. Don’t engage in them.
Don’t touch them. Don’t follow them. Just observe them. And knees. Your hamstrings.
Your glutes. Feel how they rest on a chair or a cushion. Feel the weight that is on them. Then close to your lower back. First, your tailbone and your sacrum.
The whole pelvic area. And then move to your lower back. To the middle of your back. To the level of your shoulder blades. Now go to your shoulders.
Your palms. And elbows. Your wrists. Back of your hand. Your fingers.
All the way up to the tip of your fingers. Palm of your hand. Allow any feeling to arise. And you can observe how they then naturally dissolve back into the mind. To your wrists, your inner arms.
Elbows, and your upper arms. Your shoulders. Then move up to your neck. And go to the back of your head. Moving towards the crown of your head.
And allow all the tension to go. Your eyebrows. Your eyes. Your nose and your cheeks. Your upper lip.
Lower lip. Your chin. And then go to your throat. Observe the feelings that arise from your throat. Into your chest Your stomach and your abdomen.
And in your abdomen, again, the movements caused by the inhalation and exhalation of your breath. And relax your attention. And if you feel that you need a break, you can open your eyes and stretch your body. If you feel still comfortable in the meditation, you can also stay in that position. And then go back to your seat again.
Go back to your meditation posture. Make sure that your back is straight and at the same time that all your muscles are relaxed. Your head is a little bit bent forward. Your arms are in your lap. The elbow is a little bit away from your body.
Your tongue is touching the palate. Your jaws relaxed and your eyes closed. And then again bring your awareness down to your abdomen, to the movements of your breath. And then we can try to set a good motivation. If you’re doing the whole retreat, for the whole retreat.
And if you’re just coming for the day, then try to set a motivation for the whole day. Try to think how lucky we are. That we have a human body. A human body that has the capacity to think, to reflect, to make changes if we need to, if we like to. How lucky we are that we have a healthy body so that we can hear, so that we can see, so that we are free to move around.
And with that good fortune, we have met the teachings. We’re here. At Buddha House. Where we can hear the teachings from a Geshe that has been trained for many, many years. How lucky we are that we have the time to do it, that we have the means to do it, that we have support from our environment to do it.
We are so lucky that all these causes and conditions are coming together for us. And if we look at all these causes and conditions that we need in order to be here. We can see there are many others involved. The only reason why we can do it is because there is a lot of kindness around us. And you can think of the kindness of your parents to give you this body, your education.
The kindness of those who help you to get to get here, the kindness of those who help to create good house, the kindness of those who support you, So then if you would listen to the teachings and use it only for our own development, for our own future happiness, that would be very selfish. in fact life would actually be very empty, very meaningless. But if whatever we hear and understand and can take with us after this retreat or after today, if we can at some point share with others, if we can use that to benefit others, then what we’re doing here becomes a cause for happiness, everybody that we meet. And then doing this retreat becomes very meaningful. So try to remember somehow who have been involved in all the causes and conditions that you needed to come here.
And try to think that whatever you’re gonna learn here, whatever that comes from being here, that you use that to repay their kindness, to be of benefit to them. And then in order to prepare our mind for the teachings, we can imagine or visualize that Buddha from whom these teachings come, that he is in front of us, a few meters in front of us at the level of our eyes. And you can visualize that he’s sitting on a throne, a beautiful throne with many jewels supported by snow lions. And on top of that throne is a lotus and the sun and the moon disk. And on top of that, Śākyamūni Buddha.
He’s sitting in the posture, which is the full lotus position. His left hand is in the mudra of meditation, in his lap, holding a bowl filled with nectar. And his right hand is touching the moon disk. He’s wearing the robes of a monk.
And he looks at you without any judgment. He accepts you completely. You can see all your aspects. And if you find it difficult to visualize, you can also just visualize a sphere of white light. So the body of Śākyamūni Buddha represents all his inner attainments, all his realizations.
And his body is so beautiful that no matter how much you look at it, you never become satiated. This body is beaming with light. For him, the Buddha has achieved the highest perfection. He has perfect wisdom, perfect compassion, and perfect ability to help all sentient beings. So you can visualize white light pouring out of all the pores of this body and that light comes towards you, enters your crown, and starts to fill up your whole body.
All the darkness, all our negativities, all our obscurations our not knowing, our distorted knowing, that all disappears. All of the illusions, our anger, our attachment, our jealousy, our resentment, our pride. Visualize that it is all washed away. It all leaves your body. And the more that it leaves your body, the more bright your own body becomes.
Then all the results of your negative actions that you have done out of these delusions, out of your attachment, out of your anger, Imagine that they also get removed. The white light is so strong. No negativity can remain. And check your whole body. From your crown to your feet.
Make sure that the light touches every corner, every part, every cell. Until your whole body becomes in the nature of light. Visualize the throne Śākyamūni Buddha sits upon, dissolves into the lotus. And the lotus dissolves into the sun and the moon cushion, which dissolves into Śākyamūni Buddha. And he then comes to the crown of your head facing in the same direction as you.
And dissolves into light. Let light dissolves into you and sinks from your crown to your heart. And from there, filling your whole body until you become completely one. With the Buddha’s body, speech, mind. Try to concentrate for as long as you can on that state of oneness.
And allow yourself to come slowly out of that meditation. Connect with your ordinary body. Be aware of the space. And when you feel ready, slowly open your eyes. We can have a cup of tea.
Wait for Geshe-la.