Meditation Techniques - Week 17

About This Course

Learning to meditate is a gradual process. Each week, this course has tweeted new techniques and facilitated new insights. The techniques either address particular problems that may arise when you meditate, or provide progressively more advanced methods which deepen your experience. It is recommended that you start by going back to week one's techniques and begin your weekly course at that time. The earlier exercises are not mere preliminaries. They are central methods in their own right to which you will return repeatedly - no matter how advanced your practice becomes.

To sign up for this course to be emailed to you weekly; click here Aro Meditation

This is the last week of the course.


Ways of Life

You may have read the past 16 emails with interest – but not yet started meditating. You may have meditated every day. You may have started meditating – become discouraged – and stopped. You may have meditated some weeks and not others.

If you have read this far – meditation has been part of your way of life for three months—even if only as a concept. Since the course ends here – this is the time to think seriously about what rôle you want meditation to play in your life.

Meditation is a tool which can change your way of life—without necessarily changing visible characteristics of your job, family, or daily routine—by changing your experience. How you choose to use meditation is closely connected to how you wish to live.

Beginner’s Mind

If you have not been meditating regularly – the complexity of the ‘toolkit’ provided by the past 16 emails may seem overwhelming. Concepts about meditation may now be an obstacle to actually meditating. Since meditation is a path beyond concepts – each time we sit down and begin, we must set them aside. We return to ‘beginner’s mind’, in which everything is possible—because we have no limiting preconceptions—and everything is simple.

It is hard to start meditating—if you have never attempted it before. It is hard—if after you have begun—you let your practice lapse. Let go of the weight of mixed feelings about meditation. Return to the simple instructions of week 1 or 2 – and just sit. Forget about progress. If you can meditate every day for a week – you are likely to see the world differently. It is like beginning an exercise programme when you are badly out of shape. It may feel wretched at first—and have no discernable benefits—but when you exercise regularly it becomes enjoyable. And – there is no way to become fit other than to exercise. There is no way to free your mind from neediness, aggravation, and confusion other than to meditate.

Your relationship with meditation will change over months and years. Simply continuing will gradually produce deeper understanding. Periodically you will experience entirely new ways in which meditation transforms your life. With meditation—in both the long and short term—the extent of the effect is proportional to the exertion of effort. The more you meditate—and the more dedicated your practice—the more you will feel the results.

Buddhism, Briefly

What you have previously heard about Buddhism may seem mostly irrelevant to you—if your chosen way of life involves love, career, family, creativity, or other passionate involvements in the world. Yet Buddhism contains many varied viewpoints and approaches.

Aro presents Buddhism as—simply—the unfolding implications of what is discovered in meditation – implications for passionately involved ways of life. Our essay ‘An uncommon perspective’ describes Aro’s unusual approach.

Buddhism is most commonly taught from a perspective which emphasises renunciation. Some Buddhist paths advocate withdrawal from the complexity and difficulties of ordinary life—abstaining from sense pleasures and emotional ties—ideally to become a monk or nun.

Aro’s approach—which is equally traditional—emphasises embracing passionate involvement as the essence of enlightened activity. Aro presents Buddhism as tools for creating ways of life that are vigorous, delight-filled, and liberating. We seek not to retreat from the world but to dance wholeheartedly with modern life – whether Western or Eastern.

Essential Buddhism does not belong to a specific culture even though it originated in the East. The nature of Mind addressed by essential Buddhism goes beneath ‘cultural software’ to the very ‘operating system’ of humanity – so it is as applicable now in the West as it was 2000 years ago in India.

The Aro path offers a structure for life-long learning. It provides a series of ‘phases’ which allow gradually increasing involvement as meditation and Buddhism become increasingly important in your way of life.

Preview

This is the end of the course – but it is not the end of this series of emails. Starting in a week, you will receive a weekly quotation from the book Roaring Silence, on which this course is based. Roaring Silence teaches meditation in greater depth and with a quite different style. Much of the book consists of transcripts of recorded discussions of its authors—the Lamas Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen—with students. You may find the quotes inspiring – and that they provide flashes of insight far beyond the pragmatic understanding this course has offered. If you would rather not receive these weekly quotations, you can unsubscribe at any time.

Valediction

There is always further to go with meditation. There is always a deeper level of practice and understanding available. There are always new insights to discover.

Whatever the place of meditation in your way of life—wherever your path takes you—fare well.

See our meditation resources page for a range of learning methods.