Welcome to our tenth 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/
As long as there is attachment to things that are unstable, unreliable, changing and impermanent, there will be suffering…. [i.e.] when they change, when they cease to be what we want them to be…..
If craving is the cause of suffering, then the cessation of suffering will surely follow from ‘the complete fading away and ceasing of that very craving’….its abandoning, relinquishing, releasing, letting go. We can understand impermanence intellectually, but really it is an experiential understanding that is needed to help us live our lives in the present…. learn to deal with our suffering… and also stop us wasting time (!).
Assume an upright, balanced posture…..Relax the muscles in your body… Close your eyes.
Feel the sensations in your body, from head to feet; pleasant, unpleasant, neutral; it doesn’t matter, just feel the sensations
You don’t need to control the sensations, nor change them. Just observe the sensations…
Now notice your breath: breathing in, breathing out…. Become aware of your breath changing…. Breathing in you breathe in oxygen; breathing out, you breathe out carbon….
Breathing in, new air coming in… down your throat, filling your lungs…. lungs expanding…
Breathing out, carbon is going out, through your nose or through your mouth, and your lungs are contracting, getting smaller….Be aware of this change…. Expanding your lungs, contracting your lungs…. As your lungs and breath change, your heart changes. Your heart beat is changing every second…
While your heart is changing, your blood is also changing… blood circulating throughout your body… from head to feet… every second it’s changing. Just be aware of that…
At the same time that your lungs, your heart, your blood is changing, your whole body is changing .. the organs, the cells…. From head to feet, all is changing.
Your temperature is changing… and at the same time the sensations in your body are changing: discomfort, pain, itchiness, sensations in legs… Pleasant, unpleasant…. all is changing, every moment
Notice your thoughts; they too are changing…. Let them come, let them go…
The feelings, the thoughts, just let them change………………………………………………………
Now open your eyes…. Become aware of your surroundings, and that all around is also changing…….
2.2) Prajnaparamitra the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, the Mantra that dispels Obstacles: (Session 1 of 6)
This Sutra, the 2nd turning of the wheel of Dharma was taught by the Buddha at Mass Vultures Peak in Rajagriha. It was transmitted orally & only written down a 100 years or so after the Buddhas death.
Written in Sanscrit the Mantra is “Tayatha Om Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Soha”
The literal English translation is “Go, Go, Perfectly Go, Perfectly & Completely Go to the paths to Enlightenment.
This Mantra is a powerful invocation to follow the Buddhist path & gain a direct realisation of emptiness, the true nature of phenonema.
This practise is very auspicious in this time of pandemic both to remove obstacles & to develop the wisdom to realise the true nature of phenomena.
Prajnaparamitra is the female Buddha of wisdom, she is the consort of the Wisdom Buddha Manjushri.
Over the next few weeks, there will be a short teaching on the Sutra & Mantra recitation.