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PART ONE: FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICES

The Basis for Training in the Awakening Mind

1. First, train in the foundations of the path:

a) The precious human opportunity

b) Impermanence

c) Karmic habit-patterning

d) Defects of the unenlightened life

PART TWO: THE MAIN PRACTICE OF TRAINING IN THE AWAKENING MIND

Training in the Absolute Mind of Awakening (non-conceptual)

2. Sense all that appears as like a dream

3. Examine the insubstantial/un-originated nature of awareness

4. Let even the thought of emptiness release itself

5. Rest in the natural state, the ground of all, the essence of the path

6. In post-meditation, be a wizard of illusion

Training in the Relative Mind of Awakening (conceptual)

7. Train in giving and taking alternately

8. Breathe out the giving, breathe in the taking

(to be continued each week...)

Click here for a choice of suggested texts to read about these teachings

 

Lama Surya teaches the following Six Building Blocks of a Spiritual Life:

1. Daily Spiritual Practice
2. Spiritual Study/Reading
3. Inner Growth Work
4. Regular Group Practice
5. Work with Teacher(s), Elder(s), Mentor(s)
6. Altruistic, Charitable Service

The first three tend to be more "alone", the second three more "together".

For further explanation, see Lama Surya's Facebook Note on Six Building Blocks.

"Only in the present moment, free from hope and fear, do we receive the gifts of clarity and resolve. Freed also from anger, aggression, and urgency, we are able to see the situation clearly, take it all in, and discover what to do. This clarity reveals “right action” -- those actions that feel genuinely
appropriate in this moment without any concern about whether they will succeed or not."

                    ~ Margaret Wheatley

Thus one who by having taken refuge has become the site for spiritual growth will cultivate his/her mind for the welfare of those who are alive by
 letting the flower of Compassion blossom 
in the soil of Love
and tending it with the pure water of Equanimity 
in the cool shade of Joyfulness.

As long as these four cardinal agents are not linked to 
the road to deliverance,
they are but euphoric states and remain the cause of delusion.
But if the way to inner peace has taken hold of them,
They are the four immeasurably great properties of
real being because they make us cross the ocean of delusion.

There is suffering in seeking what you cannot find by searching.

Without letting the mind project or concentrate,
Place it in ordinary naturalness.
Since there is neither the act of placing nor something to be placed,
Recognize the natural face of this placer.

That which recognizes is itself also just a concept,
So be free from fixating on that concept.
To meditate without being free from concept,
Is the great darkness that obscures that state beyond concept.

By training again and again in a meditation from concept,
There is a danger of conceptlessness turning into a concept.
So without cultivating even a nonconceptual state,
Be free from fabricating concepts.

Although you may be free from conceptual meditation,
You still need to grow accustomed to the nature of nonmeditation.
So it is essential to keep training constantly at all times,
Without abandoning true undistracted mindfulness.

When distracted you don't realize the natural state.
When meditating you stray intro the concept or the particular meditation.
So train yourself in the true path,
The undistracted and unmeditated continuity of freshness.

Your mind won't be found elsewhere,
It is just your present thought.
Don't chase after that thought.
Just look into its essence.
There is no duality -- no observer, nothing observed.

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare, 
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience 
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. ~Buddha