This guided meditation directs our attention to the quality of our attention to our experience. How our attention is uncovering reality. Zazen is a kind of experiential research into our experience of self and world that can be shared with others to arrive at common understandings. Attention can be understood as a form of taking care of ourselves and our world.

In this talk I introduce the proposal that we all must discover what enlightenment means to us. Like the historical Buddha, we must be a lamp unto ourselves, not accepting any authority other than the authority of our own experience refined in the context of dialogue with dharma friends.

Most people, whether long-term meditators or not, engage in some kind of judgemental, negative, self-talk. We may not even be fully conscious of how we criticise ourselves and reject certain parts of ourselves. We are so used to doing it that we may not even know we are doing it. Sometimes it can be loud and sometimes very quiet and ubiquitous in the background of our psyche.

This meditation is an invitation to notice this and to come to terms with and include all aspects of ourselves.

Self-acceptance is the doorway to healing and to a full and rich life. When we can accept ourselves, we accept others, and the world opens its doors to us. We can discover that it is only we who deny ourselves our heart’s greatest desire: connection and love with others.

In this enchanting guided meditation, Pingala invites us to experience ourselves as a Mountain.

Whatever you experience may be looked at more deeply by acknowledging the feeling tone. Is it pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? Contact with the world through our senses generates a sensation. Just noticing without judging, this tonality really influences our life. Can we feel both pleasant and unpleasant at the same time? Does Neutral have a negative bias? Do feeling tones linger after the experience that triggered them? Being interested in the neutral, the non-eventful , the ordinary experiences, opens them up. Neutral is really interesting! It can provide entry into stillness.

Outside the worldly winds are raging. Inside is peaceful and calm. Where are you when the winds blow? When we accept life as it is, right now, without complaining or trying to grasp for more, we come to peace and spaciousness. We come to a freedom, where we are more capable of both inner and outer change. Seeing the 8 worldly winds of the human condition, helps access this letting go of resistance to the present moment.

No longer caught in the self-centred dream.

I have given up seeking,

Content just to be

With whatever this moment brings.

This guided meditation is a contemplation on the alternative practice principles.

A common error is often to take up practice as a means to an end, we often fall into the trap of thinking we practice in order to obtain enlightenment. This is the activity of the ego-self. Rather we sit zazen to express our already enlightened buddha mind. To be Buddha is to sit with this moment exactly as-it-is and to leave everything exactly as-it-is. We even need to drop the goal of having no goal. To completely let go of seeking. As our Master Dogen said: “To study the way is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the ego-self; to forget the ego-self is to be actualized by the myriad forms”.

No longer caught in the self-centred dream.

I have given up seeking,

Content just to be

With whatever this moment brings.

This guided meditation is a contemplation on the alternative practice principles.

A common error is often to take up practice as a means to an end, we often fall into the trap of thinking we practice in order to obtain enlightenment. This is the activity of the ego-self. Rather we sit zazen to express our already enlightened buddha mind. To be Buddha is to sit with this moment exactly as-it-is and to leave everything exactly as-it-is. We even need to drop the goal of having no goal. To completely let go of seeking. As our Master Dogen said: “To study the way is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the ego-self; to forget the ego-self is to be actualized by the myriad forms”.

This guided meditation continues our contemplation on the unity of boundlessness (Buddha) and form (Dharma) and the harmonising of this unity (Sangha).

This guided meditation continues our contemplation on the unity of boundlessness (Buddha) and form (Dharma) and the harmonising of this unity (Sangha).