Integrate meditation into all aspects of your daily existence, rather than confining it solely to formal sitting sessions, to deepen your practice and understanding.
Approach difficult experiences with friendliness, embracing them as they are, rather than trying to forcefully ’let go’ of them. This allows what is gripping you to release itself naturally.
When you feel the ‘constant squeeze’ of unsatisfactoriness or pain in life, brave enough to embrace it gently with loving kindness and compassion. This allows the discomfort to reveal itself and uncoil, rather than tightening further.
Allow yourself to experience boredom fully, without immediate distraction. Staying with this space can lead to profound, freeing, and beautiful insights by dissolving the ‘veiling’ over the heart’s natural luminosity.
Through meditation, become aware of your unhelpful habits and patterns. This awareness allows the ‘mist’ of these patterns to dissolve into the light of consciousness, revealing the heart’s natural freedom.
Use moments of preliminary contentment, achieved through calming the mind, as a springboard for deep investigation into what truly matters to you and why you are here.
Don’t blindly believe teachings; instead, take up the methods, practice, and study, using your own life experiences as material for awakening to see for yourself how things actually are.
Beyond mere intellectual comprehension, strive to embody and live your understanding of the Dharma from moment to moment in all circumstances, ensuring your path is not fragmented.
Develop a heart that is porous and open, allowing all experiences to enter and leave without resistance. This involves befriending whatever arises and viewing yourself and the world with vast perspective, learning from everything.
Engage with both the practical methods and techniques of Buddhist practice and the study of its core principles, such as ethics, steadying the mind, wisdom, and compassion, to gain a wide and vast perspective.
During immense challenges like grief, rely on your established practice and trust in its ability to support you. Sustained practice through difficulty can lead to deeper emergence and even greater trustworthiness.
When facing difficulties, find refuge in sitting practice by simply adopting the posture, being quiet, and allowing everything to be there without trying to change or fix anything, trusting that it will resolve itself.
During sitting meditation, allow your mind to do whatever it wants, but consciously choose not to get involved or carried away by the thoughts, simply observing them as thinking.
Commit to a sustained meditation practice that becomes integrated into your life, rather than an occasional activity. This consistency is crucial for meaningfully greeting life’s joys and sorrows.
Appreciate and be grateful for moments when you experience a sense of ’enoughness,’ without clinging to them. This practice of appreciation will naturally lead to more such moments in your life.
If you find yourself slipping into dream-like states or deep relaxation during meditation, do not reject it. Instead, be aware of the feeling tone of wanting to be drawn into it, recognizing it as a sign of deeper letting be.
When experiencing sleepiness or lethargy during meditation, trust the process and apply a gentle attentiveness to it. This can sometimes lead to a deeper level of wakefulness.
For experienced practitioners, move beyond rigidly counting meditation minutes or evaluating progress. This allows for a more fruitful practice by opening the door beyond assessment, agendas, hopes, and fears.
Instead of being driven by neurotic patterns like constant evaluation or self-doubt, recognize them as neurosis and make them an object of meditation. This shifts perspective and allows for deeper insight.
In daily life, recognize that thinking is necessary for problem-solving. The goal is not to abandon thought, but to use your thoughts wisely, rather than being habitually used by them.
When facing problems, ask meditative questions that are ‘bigger than the problem’ itself, such as ‘How can I hold this differently?’ This approach can lead to problems dissolving or resolving themselves through a shift in perspective.
Before engaging in problem-solving, assess what is truly needed. Sometimes, cultivating more calm and spaciousness is necessary first to allow for more fruitful and creative thinking about the problem.
Apply meditative principles in group settings like meetings by fostering relaxation and a greater capacity to listen and respond. This reduces being caught up in specific outcomes and opens the door for creative solutions.
Actively seek out teachers, experiences, or situations that challenge your less helpful biases. This can be a useful way to transcend ingrained perspectives.
Practice calming your mind to allow thoughts to thin out. This creates a sense of space and preliminary contentment, which can be a foundation for deeper inquiry.
As a specific technique, repeat your name over and over again as a mantra. This can lead to a sense of non-identification and open up into something beyond the self.
If you experience strong fears, investigate them deeply to understand them. This process can be a propelling force towards freedom from those fears.
Cultivate the ability to pause and recognize what is happening in your body and how your mind is operating. This helps you avoid being yanked around by ego, emotions, or reactions.
Shift your fascination from the content of individual thoughts to the underlying process or ‘infrastructure’ of thinking itself. This can lead to a deeper understanding of the mind.
Become fascinated with the natural bubbling up of affection, well-being, happiness for others, and the desire to alleviate suffering. This is a cultivation of your true, loving nature.
Engage with practice to gain your own experiences, rather than relying on what others tell you. This personal verification builds complete confidence in the path.
As you deepen your practice, strive for honesty and authenticity in your approach, offering your true self and life experiences as part of your meditative journey.
Cultivate a mindset of sensing yourself as an integral part of nature, rather than separate from it. This fosters a broader perspective and interconnectedness.
Adopt the view that ’everything is my practice,’ meaning every experience that happens can be understood, learned from, and integrated, rather than categorizing some as outside of practice.
While a short daily practice is beneficial, remain open to the vastness of the Dharma world and do not limit your potential for deeper engagement and exploration beyond your current comfort zone.
If you experience sleepiness during meditation, maintain a small degree of attentiveness to it without trying to push it away. This patience can sometimes lead to a deeper state of wakefulness.