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Meditation At the Birmingham Shambhala Meditation Center we practice and teach mindfulness-awareness meditation. This type of meditation has been passed from teacher to student for 2500 years as a vehicle for realizing the beauty and magic of the ordinary world without aggression or manipulation. Meditation helps us slow down, look at our mind and get to know ourselves. Looking at the mind (meditation) leads to understanding (wisdom) which leads to freedom from suffering.
Listen to a talk about meditation by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
MEDITATION BRINGS RELIEF
"Believing that thought patterns are a solid self is the source of our bewilderment and suffering. Seeing through this simple misunderstanding is the beginning of enlightenment.
The meditation technique engenders clarity because in recognizing, acknowledging, and releasing thoughts, we realize that the mind's movement isn't "me." We don't have to cling to it as if it were a life raft. We'll still be here even if we let go. Releasing the thoughts and returning to the breath gives us a sense of space and relief. In that instant we are grounded, so to speak, because we can see ourselves as separate from our thoughts and emotions. . . .
Meditation allows us to relax our grip on "me" because we're able to see the thoughts not so much as our personal identity, but more as the effects of the speed of our mind. We gain perspective. We can see the thoughts come and go. We're not so limited by them. Suddenly everything falls into place. We might have spent our entire life -- and many lifetimes over, according to the Buddhist teachings -- identifying with the movement of our mind. Now mindfulness and awareness present us with the revolutionary opportunity to observe that movement without being swept into it."
-Sakyong Mipham
From Turning the Mind Into an Ally, pp. 63-64 |
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