Deepening our Meditation on the Clarity of the Mind

Our ability to remain mindful and focused on peaceful, positive states of mind is essential to a happy life. And of course developing a strong and stable experience of concentration is fundamental to the development of the higher spiritual realizations that constitute our path to enlightenment. This is made clear in The Oral Instructions of Mahamudra where the first of the five stages of training in Mahamudra, our quick path to enlightenment, is training in concentration, specifically on the clarity of the mind.

These days in our overstimulated and distracted society people struggle to develop stable mindfulness and concentration. And even among spiritual practitioners many feel that attaining higher levels of concentration is not possible. Due to this discouragement many no longer emphasize actively training in improving their concentration, known as training in tranquil abiding.

In this Easter course we will explore the clear instructions Geshe Kelsang has given us to deepen our meditation on the clarity of the mind. The emphasis will be on applying these instructions in practice in meditation. By taking our time and building up our practice on the correct basis we will discover for ourself how clear and practical these instructions are and how in fact we can make real headway in our development of joyful concentration. We will see how our own perfectionism and grasping at results is getting in the way of our deeply enjoying our meditation and through that making real progress.

The meditation on the nature of the mind is seen as the best object for improving our concentration. The emphasis in the course will be in giving everyone practical experience of the wonderful qualities of this object, whatever your level of practice is, so that everyone increases their confidence in being able to progress through the mental abidings, in particular becoming confident in our ability to attain the fourth mental abiding that Geshe Kelsang so encourages us to attain.

Because we will also train in maintaining mindfulness of the mind during the meditation break we will be exploring how this meditation sets up for the realizations of Emptiness and the bliss of Highest Yoga Tantra. The skill we develop through training in concentration on this object, can then be easily applied to all our other meditations. Everyone welcome.