Month: March 2021

The Buddha’s teachings, also known as the Dharma, contain many valuable practices for nurturing wholesome qualities of the mind and heart, such as the five powers of faith, enthusiasm, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. We often underestimate the power residing in these wonderful qualities, regarding them as “weak” in comparison to the strength of our anger, craving and close-mindedness. In fact, when we properly develop these wholesome qualities, they become  reliable supports that greatly enhance our resilience in the face of life challenges. This workshop features several sessions of guided meditations with explanations and time for Q&A or discussion. All are welcome; no prerequisite needed.

During Guru Puja (or  Lama Chopa), we invoke all the lamas of the graduated path lineage beginning with Shakyamuni Buddha himself, extending to our present direct teachers who have shown us the path. We pay homage to them, make offerings, and request each of them to please bless our minds with the same realisations that they themselves have generated. By offering sincere, heartfelt requests, we make our minds ripe to receive the full blessings of this precious lineage and quickly actualise the realisations we need to attain enlightenment.

Audio recordings of previous classes can be found here

Shamatha, or calm-abiding, meditation aims to settle the disturbances and dysfunctions of our body and mind in meditation so that they can truly abide here and now peacefully and blissfully. This course will introduce the different conducive conditions we can bring together to facilitate this settling down of our body and mind. We will look at the steps and the process of shifting our meditative experience towards a state of deepening meditative absorption and the benefits we can gain from it.

All are welcome; no prerequisite needed.