Welcome to our fourteenth online suggested practise for the week. We are now broadcasting a live teaching each Monday evening. If you would like to participate please contact us using the contact form on the homepage.
1.0) If you feel so inclined, begin by reciting the usual prayers (please follow below links for text). Alternatively, try to think or articulate a wish for all beings to achieve liberation from suffering, etc .
Four Thoughts: contemplating each in turn – http://northantsbuddhists.com/the-four-thoughts/
Refuge Prayer: twice in Tibetan, once in English – http://northantsbuddhists.com/the-refuge-prayer/
2.1) As a follow up to last weeks teaching on Placing the Mind without Support – Excerpt from Pointing Out the Dharmakaya by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche
We have included a graphic to help you with this meditation technique. This meditation uses the elements and the dissolution of the elements, one into another, as a basis for the mind coming to rest. The technique involves visualizing the elements in their essential form.
So, the earth is visualized as a square – not an entirely flat square, but not really a cube either, a square with some thickness – of yellow light. Then, behind that we visualize water in the form of a disk, again with some thickness, of white light. Behind that, fire in the form of a triangle of red light, pointing downwards. Behind that, wind or air, in the form of a semi-circle of green light (with the flat side up), and behind that is space, as a tetrahedron of blue light. This is like an upside-down three-sided pyramid. Following that, we then visualize that they dissolve one into another. Having clearly visualized this, we think that then the earth dissolves into water, the water dissolves into the fire, the fire dissolves into the air, the air dissolves into the space, and the space dissolves into emptiness.
2.2) Six Words of Advice by Tilopa (988–1069) was born in either Chativavo (Chittagong), Bengal or Jagora, Bengal in India
Don’t recall – Let go of what has passed
Don’t imagine – Let go of what may come
Don’t think – Let go of what is happening now
Don’t examine – Don’t try to figure anything out
Don’t control – Don’t try to make anything happen
Rest Relax, right now, and rest
2.3) The Dalai Lama’s Favorite Prayer
“For as long as space endures,
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide,
To dispel the misery of the world.”
And, in trying to fulfil that aspiration, I feel my life has been of some benefit.
~ His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama
2.4) Prajnaparamitra the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, the Mantra that dispels Obstacles: (Session 3 of 6)
The 5 aggregates or Skandhas of a Human Being
1. Form (Pali, rupa)—the physical world
2. Sensation or Feeling (vedana)— not “sensations” or “feelings” as they’re meant in ordinary English usage, but our simplest responses to experience: like, dislike, or indifference
3.Discrimination or Perception (sanna)—again, not “perception” as conveyed by ordinary English, but the recognition or interpretation of sense objects followed by mental labeling.
4.Compositional factors or Mental formations (sankharas)— volitional mental actions, triggered by some object, that produce karma
5. Consciousness (vinnana)—cognizance, including thoughts, which this system views as sense objects perceived through the “sense gate” of the mind
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