Week 5 - Concentration

The perfection of mental stabilization - CONCENTRATION

Definition: Concentration is a mental factor that is capable of abiding one-pointedly on an object of virtue without distraction. (Geshe Loden)

Synonyms for concentration: one-pointedness, fixed mind, which when cultivated, achieves calm abiding, tranquil quiescence, mental quiescence. Concentration is a general term for focusing the mind on an object, calm abiding is a particular type of concentration.

There are nine levels of concentration to attain calm abiding and we need particular conditions, merit, perseverance and motivation in order to perfect concentration.

Mental stabilization brings the mind closer and closer to its object until the mind and object mix.

Special insight and calm abiding are interdependent “as the trunk of a tree is the source of all variety of branches, twigs and leaves, calm abiding and special insight are the source of all realizations.” (Geshe Loden pg 792)

Six pre-requisites or optimum conditions to achieving calm abiding (in 6 months according to Pabonka Rinpoche):

1.) a suitable place
2.) few desires
3.) contentment/being satisfied
4.) not having many activities
5.) pure ethics
6.) abandoning disturbing thoughts/conceptions

Main Practise of concentration – nine stages or levels; 5 obstacles – 8 antidotes

Nine Stages:
1.) placing the mind
2.) placement with continuity
3.) patch-like placement
4.) close placement
5.) controlling
6.) pacifying
7.) complete pacification
8.) single pointed concentration
9.) placement with equanimity

Five Obstacles:
1.) laziness
2.) forgetting the instructions
3.) laxity and excitement (gross and subtle forms)
4.) non-application
5.) over-application


Eight antidotes to the obstacles:
1.) Laziness: faith, aspiration, effort, pliancy
2.) Forgetting: memory/mindfulness
3.) Laxity and excitement: awareness/vigilance
4.) Non-application: application of antidote
5.) Over-application: apply equanimity

Gross Laxity and Excitement are the two main obstacles to overcome while doing single pointed/concentration meditation.

Gross laxity – you are mindful of the object band the image is stable but unclear; it occurs when the mind is too withdrawn. The mind is heavy and we have to lighten it and be joyful. (Loden 810)

Antidotes to laxity in meditation:
- imagine the sun shining on you. Try and focus on the details of the object of meditation very closely. Expand the object, extend it, increase its brilliance.
- Massage the back of your neck. Splash cold water on your face. If need be get up, go for a walk then return to the practice.

Gross excitement: a type of attachment which is led astray by attractive objects; excitement and distraction are different ie you could be angry, this is a distraction not an excitement. Loosen your concentration, you are trying too hard which causes excitement; mind is too high, too happy;

Antidotes to excitement: imagine the moon shining on you. Contemplate death, suffering of lower realms, war, starvation, karma. Count breath for 21, do it twice ot to 100; do physical exercise, return and continue.

Benefits to Calm Abiding? - pliancy of mind and body; ability to achieve emptiness to understand and eradicate suffering; mind will absorb more information more quickly …

Questions to contemplate:What are some of the benefits of concentration we can see manifest in everyday life? What is the damage done by a distracted mind?

Are You a Seeker or a Finder?

The following quote is taken from EnlightenNext Magazine Quote of the Week. I couldn't help myself when I read this to want to pass it along. There's a full article where this quote comes from, and it's well worth the read!


Are you a seeker or a finder? This is a very important question. If you are on a spiritual path, have you found what you are looking for? Or are you still searching? If you are doing a spiritual practice, are you doing it to reach a goal or are you doing it just because you think it’s a good thing to be doing? Or are you doing spiritual practice from another position altogether—the position of being a finder? Being a finder means you are one of those rare individuals who has unequivocally found what they are looking for, and are now doing spiritual practice only because they want to continue to develop.~ Andrew Cohen


To read this in its entirety, visit Andrew Cohen's blog on the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-z-cohen/spiritual-practice-is-spi_b_751687.html

Youwealth Replays

For the month of November I subscribed to Youwealth where I was able to listen to various people speak each day on wealth, health, relationship and consciousness. I was intrigued on two levels: first, professionally I wanted to see how others presented themselves, and then secondly what new information I could personally gain.

The organization Youwealth has just put out the "best of" and I wanted to share these replays with you. You can listen for one week only to these free recordings, so fill your boots and get what you can. I have not listened to them all, so tell me what you think. I especially liked both the women: Ann Taylor and Carol Look.

Ann Taylor does healing prayer right over the telephone re-programming our DNA. What a blast. And Carol Look does EFT, a technique I learned years ago in therapy to help with changing beliefs and patterning through tap touching. It's similar to The Way of the Heart techniques but its based on acupuncture/pressure points. I find EFT really effective for helping with anxiety, fear, overwhelm, pain of any kind and on. Thought you might too.

I've been fighting a nasty flu since Saturday, and today is the first day I feel almost 100%. I didn't do the Teleseminar nor any of my classes this week. I'm sorry to those who were looking forward. The week instead was a wonderful time to deeply relax back into my body. Much, much needed rest.




During this time I saw how I whip myself into and out of shape. How I have such high expectations on myself and how out of touch with my desires I can get. I had family visiting prior to getting ill, and as all the experts say, to see how healed you are, spend a week with your family! The good new is there was no fighting, no disharmoney. Yeah! A first.

So let me know what you think of these various MP3s. If you listen to anything, listen to Ann. I find her voice can get a bit irritating, but the prayers are amazing.


Ann Taylor: REPLAY - SUPER HEALING MARATHON http://youwealthrevolution.com/now/


Darius Barazandeh: REPLAY - The Experiment: The Limitless Process!
http://youwealthrevolution.com/now/

Dr. Symeon Rodger: REPLAY - Secrets of Personal Resilience: Mastering the Ultimate Wealth.
http://youwealthrevolution.com/now/


John Assaraf: REPLAY - Winning the Inner Game of Business.
http://youwealthrevolution.com/now/


Larry Crane: REPLAY - Release Technique: How to Overcome Fear & Resistance to Becoming Wealthy.
http://youwealthrevolution.com/now/


Jim Kwik: REPLAY - Unlocking Your Super Hero Mind: Speedreading & Memory Power for Faster Learning and Earning!
http://youwealthrevolution.com/now/


Carol Look: REPLAY - Secrets and EFT - Tapping Into The Vibration of Abundance!
http://youwealthrevolution.com/now/

Happy Listening!

PATIENCE WITHIN POISE (book excerpt)

For three years I waited patiently for my next relationship with a man to appear. There had been many nights of tears in bed, gnashing of teeth, deep scrutinizing of soul, lonely hours for me to come to accept what my higher power was trying to say to me.

Then I had an epiphany at a Chant Festival where one of the chant leaders of the Muslim faith said, that everything that happens is because of love. He said, that our Divine loves us more than we can ever know or believe. At the time my immediate human response was, “yeah, well if this is love, then I wonder what hell looks like.” Then I caught myself seeing a higher perspective, that if this is in fact love, then I truly don’t know what love is. That left me flat on my proverbial backside. What I was experieincing hadn’t been feeling like love, the warm, embracing, “give me everything that I want” feeling inside. Instead I felt abandoned, forgotten, left alone and that didn’t feel like love.

I had to turn things on their head and re-look at what I thought love would feel and look like from a Divine Source. Perhaps I have been a spoiled child feeding myself metaphoric sugar, fast food and instant gratification and perhaps the divine parent was now feeding me rolled oats, brown rice and a more substantial diet for a longer term gratification or fulfillment.

I had to concede that perhaps this higher power knew more than I did, knew better for me than I, otherwise every relationship wouldn’t end or at least I’d be in one at the present moment. I had to concede and accept that perhaps a period of time (longer than what I would have deemed necessary) was necessary in which I needed to heal more deeply the in-grained patterns and programs I thought were about love, but in fact were about need, and gratification. That was quite a revelation to me and from that moment of acceptance to this there has been more quiet and less restlessness about this man not coming forward fast enough.

In those three years of waiting I was taught about poise, about self assuredness, about self confidence, and that they and I aren’t dependent upon whom I am in relationship with.

I was taught about bearing, composure and dignity and that they are also not in reliance upon another human being.

I was taught about equanimity and love of my fellows in times when I did not feel my best, but realized that it was not them who were at fault but my programs and conditioning that were making me experience certain emotions.

I was taught a lot about poise, without even knowing that is what I was being taught.

I want to be the kind of person you would look at on the street, while with friends, or in a professional setting and see the same person each time. See the strength, humility, confidence, self-love, poise, bearing, compassion in every moment of my day or night. These are not attributes that come easily or without intention. They come, from my experience with deep attention to the intention. They come from surrounding myself with like-minded and like-hearted individuals. They come from diligence, perseverance and persistent gentleness.

Some days there may be more energy than others, but consistently the willingness to evolve and persevere, to be a better human in order that the planet be a better home to humans, is there. That is my wish. That is my goal. That is my intention, my desire, my dream. How simple yet how difficult to daily show up to these desires of my heart. And I know I’m not alone. I wish to share these words with others who also want to succeed not only for themselves, but for the planet and for humanity to evolve beyond where we are currently.

Week 4 - Perseverance/Joyous Effort

To be able to generate joyful effort, we must abandon laziness. It is therefore important understand the three kinds of laziness:

1. The laziness of procrastination

- putting our spiritual practice off until “later”. The antidote to laziness is to reflect on impermanence, the preciousness of human existence, and the uncertainty of the time of death.

2. The laziness of being attracted to what is meaningless or non-virtuous

- engaging in meaningless behavior like channel surfing or talking on the telephone with no purpose. These dissipate our energy and our spiritual practice seems like it is an obstacle to our pleasure. Antidote is remembering how these activities waste our precious human existence.

3. The laziness of discouragement
- since we cannot see enlightened beings with our own eyes, sometimes we can doubt whether they exist, or we may see faults in our spiritual teacher or guide. Antidote is to remember that we have the delusion of ignorance, so what appears to our mind is not the way it actually exists.

There are three types of effort:

1. Armour-like effort

We need to put our armour on each morning by firmly resolving not to become overwhelmed or depressed by the difficulties we encounter.

2. The effort of gathering virtuous truths

Exertion of effort into virtuous actions (as opposed to the wish or intention)

3. The effort of benefiting others

Again, the actual exertion of effort to benefit others (as opposed to the wish or intention.


There are four ways to increase our effort.
These are known as the four forces:

1. Aspiration
The wish to engage in virtuous actions by seeing their benefits and the dangers of non-virtuous actions

2. Steadfastness
Like water in a wide river, gently flowing day and night, year after year. Better to apply small effort continuously than a huge amount for a few days and then stop. Before you take on a task, think about if you can complete it.

3. Joy
Like a child at play, engrossed and content in our games, letting nothing distract us.

4. Relaxation
Don’t get overtired from exerting too much effort…relax so you can apply new effort again.

Week 3 - Patience

How could you find enough leather
To cover the ground?
Having leather on the soles of your sandals
Is the same as covering the whole earth
- Shantideva, Guide to the Bodhisattvas Way of Life

Definition: “Patience is a resolute response against adversity stemming from a settled temperament unperturbed by either external or internal disturbance.”
- HHDL, Healing Anger


Patience is a virtuous mind that can remain undisturbed or indifferent to any form of harm inflicted by others; can voluntarily endure and remain undisturbed or indifferent to any form of suffering and can remain definitely thinking about love and spiritual life.

What is the object of our patience but negative emotions and delusions. We need to understand moral discipline otherwise If we don’t have the correct ethics, then how do we know when or who to be patient with? Remember the nature of being caught in the cyclic existence of suffering is to be confused and to have conflict so don’t be surprised when negative emotions arise – embrace them! Ironically, we need adversity to cultivate patience.

Trust and acceptance are in involved in cultivating patience. Like a piece of smooth driftwood, we need sandpaper to create the smoothness, not silk!

Patience is an antidote to anger, jealousy, hatred/self hatred/aversion (fear). These negative emotions cause suffering and destroy our virtue. Practicing patience helps us in this life and in all future lives.

There is definite distinction between meekness and tolerance. We are not advocating being a doormat! We must apply countermeasures when necessary.

There are three kinds of patience

1. The patience of not retaliating, remaining calm in the face of attackers
- not reacting to harm or abuse from others (whether intentional or not)

2. The patience of accepting suffering
- when we are up against difficulties and hardships, mundane and spiritual

3. The patience of assurance in the Truth
- applying ourselves to reflecting on spiritual teachings, no matter how difficult this may be

Benefits of patience:

There are seven benefits:
1.) your spiritual practice will deepen and become stronger
2.) your renunciation will deepen you will be less attached to the mundane world and therefore be happier
3.) your complexion will soften and your appearance will become more attractive generally
4.) your karma in future will be lessened because you’ve already endured some of the ripening of it in the present
5.) remove arrogance
6.) develop compassion
7.) avoid non-virtue and rejoice in virtue

Chandrakirti said that if we practice patience we will have a very beautiful human body in the future and we will become a holy being with high realizations.

Be angry at your anger, jealousy, self hatred, destroy the true delusion which is self cherishing and ignorance, not the person who is inflicting the anger or is the object of delusion.

Patience is armour and beautiful jewelry too!

Heartwork/Homework
1.) Ask yourself where do I not have a settled temperment unperturbed by internal or external disturbances?
2.) Make a list of resentemnts of people or situations which agitate your mind.
3.) Meditate on Acceptance and WHAT IS.
4.) Ruminate on the word PATIENCE - all week. Notice when you need to cultivate it in everyday life.

Week 2 - Moral Discipline/Ethics

This week we turned our focus onto how and why we must train in moral discipline and ethics in all that we think, do and say.


To listen to the replay, click this link:
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=15684258 Please note there is about a minute of dead air to begin.


The perfection of ethics is a state of mind with the ultimate goals being


ALLEVIATE Suffering & CREATE Happiness & Peace

We do this by:
1.) Restraining from harm
2.) Creating virtue – that which causes peace; non virtue is that which disturbs the mind
3.) Benefitting Other Beings

There are three major ways as a human being we must train in moral discipline and ethics.

Through our:
Body
- avoid sexual misconduct
- avoid killing
- avoid stealing

Speech
- avoid lying
- avoid gossip
- avoid slander (divisive or harsh speech)

Mind
- avoid wrong view.

There are eleven virtuous mental factors to keep in mind: faith, shame, embarrassment, non-attachment, non-hatred, non-ignorance, joyous effort, pliancy, conscientiousness, equanimity and non-harmfulness.

Guard the mind from disturbing emotions. Acknowledge faulty thoughts and actions.

Short term suffering - > long term happiness
Short term happiness - > long term suffering

GUARD YOUR MORAL DISCIPLINE LIKE YOR EYES

Being in a human body, as hard as we try to attain and perfect our moral discipline and ethics, we transgress and fall down. The following are antidotes to cleanse and purify our transgressions.

The Four Antidotes
1.) Power of Reliance
2.) Counteractive Behaviour
3.) Regret
4.) Promise

Power of Reliance
1.) take heartfelt refuge in the unseen beings and higher powers
2.) cultivate the wish to help beings; cultivate an altruistic intention

Counteractive Behaviour= Positive action as Purification
1.) make offerings (of time, objects, fearlessness and love)
2.) consciously
3.) cultivate compassion and love consciously do kind hearted actions
4.) contemplate interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings and all phenomena

Regret
First acknowledge your wrong actions, thoughts, or speech as if you have swallowed poison and deeply regret your transgressions. This action will reinforce the deep dislike for what we have done.

Promise
In our mind and heart we make a promise not to do the nonvirtuous action again for a set period of time. Make the period of time reasonable, so that you will actually fulfil the promise to self.

Example, say that you won’t gossip for a week. At the end of the week, when you feel you’ve accomplished your promise, then re-set your goal. Build on the strength of doing virtue, rather than setting the intention to never gossip again and failing to do that, feeling bad when you fall down.

Heartwork/Homework
1.) Write a list of people you have harmed, deceived, stole from, spoken ill of, lied to IN YOUR LIFETIME. Make sure your name is on the list.
2.) Notice when you need to apply the antidotes in your life.


To listen to the replay, click this link:
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=15684258

POISE

When the drama of emotions wears itself out, the calmness of serenity arises; the truth emerges. When the veils of confusion are lifted the dawn of acceptance, of forgiveness, of self-love breaks.

It’s pretty radical to think and to experience the fact that there is only love, and all else in conditioning and a learned program. Radical. Yet true.

In a state of waiting, our work becomes learning deeper levels of patience, equanimity, observation and subtler levels of self-love, self-assurance, self-possession and confidence. None of these are come by easily and without a struggle or fight from the ego. Something must die in order for space to be made for those qualities to deepen. We must cultivate patience in the times of watching parts of our “identity” die, and we must holdfast to our composure, faith and trust during the times when this inner dying is occurring and the new confidence and strength has yet to be born. There is a universal moment of waiting that can take days, weeks or months to arrive that we must live through with grace, faith and poise.

One must first know what the meaning of self assurance, self confidence, self possession are before we can hold these states. When one loves oneself deeply and fully and can hold oneself gently in times of strife and in an equanimous way where neither left nor right is right or wrong; where up or down is neither good nor bad knowing that all is good, we move into mastery. This is a state of mastery of self-love. Every direction, every possibility can only bring about evolution and change for humanity and one can be patient, composed and ready for whatever it is that needs to appear and let it appear in its own time.

Stillness. Poise. In a time of waiting, one needs poise. Timing in life is always a factor. The perfect moment always arrives. To be in time /on time poise is always necessary. It is the state when one is absolutely ready for chronos and kyros to meet. It is key to when the eternal, vertical moment of kyros and the horizontal, earthbound chronos energy of life collide; one must be ready to accept what occurs. Poise: the positioning of oneself with grace while listening intently to the situation at hand. We can call it bearing, composure, self-assurance, deportment, dignity, self-confidence, carriage, good posture. The Random House College Dictionary defines it thus:

A state of balance or equilibrium as from equality or equal distribution; dignified, self-possession; the state or position of hovering; to adjust, hold or carry in equilibrium, balance evenly.

It is in this balancing evenly that not giving up hope is the toughest. Having faith and continuously surrendering to what the next moment or day will bring becomes the work. Watching the bank account lessen and the line of credit increase is the work. Watching the daily decisions about food being bought, bills being paid and paying attention to the feelings at every step, is the work. Intention is the key and with poise the only intention at this point is for clarity and to be of highest service. We must enjoy our life supremely while we’re in the holding pattern.

The Divine, the Universe, the Field, God, the Buddhas, Allah, Jawah, whatever name you want to call it, never takes us to the top of the heap to drop us off. We are all being called to higher duty, and for that to happen we must dig deeper within for more self-confidence, self-assuredness, self-possession. These all must be equally distributed in our being, must be embodied fully in order for the next marching orders to appear. We wait and we wait. Some of us busy ourselves in the waiting which makes for a more difficult time in the hearing of what it is we are to hear.

As the Sufi poet Hafiz wrote, the Divine can only pour water into a still jug.