Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute guided session, Ven Sanghy Khandro leads foundational meditation instruction: systematic body relaxation, followed by breath-focused awareness and the core practice of working with thoughts. She teaches that when thoughts arise during meditation, observe them like clouds passing through an empty sky—transient and without substance—rather than following them. Using the sky-and-clouds analogy, she emphasizes that the mind is spacious and clear while thoughts inevitably come and go. The session’s second half shifts to white-light visualization: a radiant sphere descends from above your head and expands to fill your entire body, transforming every cell into pure luminous awareness. Pitched at beginners and those strengthening foundational practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 Impermanance.mp3
UUID: 330c55f2-e323-44a0-932f-c143bcc154e3
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Meditations (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Date: 1985 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~878
So sit comfortably. Keep your back straight. Sit straight, shoulders relaxed, and breathe as you normally do. Check on your reasons for doing the meditation and think of how it will benefit you and enable you to help others. So in order to have a good meditation, it’s important to be relaxed physically and mentally.
So we’ll start by relaxing the body. Become aware of the feelings and sensations in your head. If you find any tension inside the head, in the forehead, around the eyes, in the jaw, Let it go. Relax. Now become aware of the feelings and sensations in your neck and release any tension you might find there.
Now move your awareness down into your chest and shoulders. If you find any tension or tightness, relax. Continue to sweep downwards with your awareness through the trunk of your body and your spine, giving particular attention to the lower back and the abdomen. Release any knots of tension. And do the same with your legs, knees, calves, ankles, and feet.
Finally, your arms. Sweep them with your awareness. Sweep away all tension. Try to stay relaxed during the meditation. If you notice that your body tenses up at any point, put your attention there and consciously relax.
Release that tension. Now focus your attention on the breath. You can do this in one of two ways, observing either the sensation at the tip of the nostrils as the breath enters and leaves the body, or the rising and falling of the abdomen with each inhalation and exhalation. Think to yourself breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in, breathing out.
Also, you might find it helpful to count each breath. Count up to ten breaths, and then start again at one. Keep your mind focused on the breathing. Whenever another thought or feeling or perception appears in the mind, simply take note of it, observe it in a detached way. Do not get involved in it.
Do not identify with it. Do not judge it as good or bad. Just observe it and bring your attention back to the breath. Think of your mind as being like the sky, spacious, clear, empty. Thoughts and other experiences are like clouds.
They appear, pass across the sky, then disappear. Thoughts come and go. They are transient, momentary. Just notice them and let them go, returning your attention again and again to the breath. Don’t be frustrated if your attention is always wandering.
This is normal, so be patient with yourself. Be content to stay in the present, accept whatever frame of mind you are in and whatever arises in your mind. Be free of expectation, craving, and frustration. Have no wish to be somewhere else, to be doing something else, or even to feel some other way. Be content just as you are.
Now to conclude the meditation, dedicate the positive energy you’ve generated that your awareness will continue to grow and that you will become more calm and relaxed and better able to help others. Sit comfortably and breathe naturally. Generate the motivation to do this meditation for the benefit of all beings. Take a few minutes to sweep through your body with your awareness, releasing any tension that you find. Now visualize in the space above your head a sphere of white light, somewhat smaller than the size of your head.
Pure, transparent, radiant light. Concentrate on this sphere of light, letting your mind become familiar with its presence and not allowing your mind to be distracted to other objects. You should be using your mental awareness rather than your eyes to see this object, so your eyes should be relaxed. And don’t worry if it doesn’t appear sharply. It’s enough just to feel that it is there.
Contemplate that the sphere of light represents all universal goodness, love, wisdom, all the good qualities that you would like to have, the fulfillment of your own highest potential. Now visualize that this sphere of light decreases in size until it is about an inch in diameter. Diameter. Then it descends through the top of your head and comes down to your heart center in the center of your chest. From there, it begins to expand again, to melt and flow.
And this light, like liquid, flows through your chest. It flows upwards into your head. Down your arms, filling them right down to the fingertips. It flows down through your abdomen. Into your legs, filling your legs right down to the toes.
So now your entire body, every cell, every atom, is filled with radiant white light. And imagine that the solid parts of your body bone, muscle, tissue, blood, skin, and so forth, all become pure, transparent white light. Concentrate on the experience of your body as a body of light. Think that all problems, negativities, and hindrances have completely vanished and that you’ve reached a state of wholeness and perfection. Feel serene and joyful.
If any thought or distracting object should appear in your mind, let it also dissolve into white light. Meditate in this way as long as you can. So now to conclude, dedicate the positive energy from doing this meditation that all beings throughout the universe may find peace of mind and happiness.