Natural Meditation podcast: Recent Episodes
Stephan Pende Wormland
Stephan Wormland, MA in clinical psychology and trained in Gestalt therapy. He has studied and practiced meditation in multiple Buddhist traditions for over 30 years and spent altogether 5 years in meditation retreats. Stephan was a monk in the Tibetan tradition for 11 years and teaches meditation in Buddhist centers in Europe.
Uncovering the Light within by feeling your feelings. Recordings from a weekend retreat in Sweden.
Spiritual bypass or spiritual bypassing is a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks
Spiritual bypassing is a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.
Guided Standing Meditation followed by Self-inquiry. Recordings from a weekend in Sweden
Changing the relationship with the content of your experience. Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice.
Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice. Introduction into Self-Inquiry
The four characteristics of Karma and Trauma. Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice.
The key to heal trauma and purify karma. Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice.
Meeting your future self. Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice.
The first step in the healing process of Trauma and Karma is to create a safe healing space. Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice.
The first step in the healing process of Trauma and Karma is to create a safe healing space. Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice.
The first step in the healing process of Trauma and Karma is to create a safe healing space. Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice.
The first step in the healing process of Trauma and Karma is to create a safe healing space. Recordings from a weekend about trauma-informed Dharma practice.
Traditional practices for preparing for your death and to support others who are dying.
What is healthy attachment? Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
Discovering Tenderness as a natural capacity of your heart. Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
Guided meditation and explanation of the death process. Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
Preparing for your death by being here, in the present moment. Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
Death is certain, the time of death is uncertain. What is really important in your life? Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
Meditation on taking Refuge, followed by a talk. Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
Guided meditation on the certainty of death, followed by a talk. Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
Recordings from a weekend in Göteborg about death, dying, how to prepare for your death and how to support others who are dying.
The 18th century Tibetan mystic Jigmé Lingpa wrote many poems about the practice of Dzogchen, one of the great wisdom traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. One such poem is Revelations of Ever-present Good from his Great Vastness Heart Drop cycle. In A Trackless Path Ken McLeod presents a fluid contemporary translation of this poem, accompanied by a deeply moving and insightful commentary. The combination makes Jigmé Lingpa’s mystical poem relevant and accessible to today’s seeker. We will explore the text based on Ken McLeod’s book in this 3 month course.
The 18th century Tibetan mystic Jigmé Lingpa wrote many poems about the practice of Dzogchen, one of the great wisdom traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. One such poem is Revelations of Ever-present Good from his Great Vastness Heart Drop cycle. In A Trackless Path Ken McLeod presents a fluid contemporary translation of this poem, accompanied by a deeply moving and insightful commentary. The combination makes Jigmé Lingpa’s mystical poem relevant and accessible to today’s seeker. We will explore the text based on Ken McLeod’s book in this 3 month course.
The 18th century Tibetan mystic Jigmé Lingpa wrote many poems about the practice of Dzogchen, one of the great wisdom traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. One such poem is Revelations of Ever-present Good from his Great Vastness Heart Drop cycle. In A Trackless Path Ken McLeod presents a fluid contemporary translation of this poem, accompanied by a deeply moving and insightful commentary. The combination makes Jigmé Lingpa’s mystical poem relevant and accessible to today’s seeker. We will explore the text based on Ken McLeod’s book in this 3 month course.
Your spacious mind is the natural awareness that knows and accommodates everything. My meditation teacher in the forests of Thailand, Ajahn Chah, called it “the One Who Knows.” He said this is the original nature of mind, the silent witness, spacious consciousness. His instructions were simple: become witness to it all, the person with perspective, the One Who Knows. - Jack Kornfield
Introduction into Buddhist Tantric practice by presenting the three principles of the path to Awakening.
Introduction into Buddhist Tantric practice by presenting the three principles of the path to Awakening.
How to relate to difficult feelings during this time using the RAIN - model. Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation, and Non-Identification.
In this recording from an online meeting, you will be introduced to simple practices on how to relate to the situation in a more wholesome way.
All of these practices were taught By the Mighty One for the sake of wisdom. Therefore those who wish to pacify suffering Should generate this wisdom. - Shantideva
The mind's original nature is like space; It pervades and embraces all things under the sun. Be still and stay relaxed in genuine ease, Be quiet and let sound reverberate as an echo, Keep your mind silent and watch the ending of all worlds. -Tilopa
Homage to the state of great bliss! Concerning what is called Mahamudra All things are your own mind. Seeing objects as external is a mistaken concept; Like a dream, they are empty of concreteness. This mind, as well, is a mere movement of attention That has no self-nature, being merely a gust of wind. Empty of identity, like space. All things, like space, are equal. - Naropa
The root of all problems is the distortion of reality based on the identification with the narrative Self.
Self-Kindness is necessary if you want to open to others. The biggest obstacles to Bodhicitta is the harsh voice in your head.
Dwelling deep within our heart, and within the hearts of all beings without exception, is an inexhaustible source of love and wisdom. And the ultimate purpose of all spiritual practices, whether they are called Buddhist or not, is to uncover and make contact with this essentially pure nature. - Lama Yeshe
When we have discovered our own inner purity, inner compassion, and inner love, we can then see the reflection of this purity and loving-kindness in others. But if we have not contacted these qualities within ourselves, we will see everyone as ugly and limited. For whatever we see every day in outer reality is actually nothing more than a projection of our own inner reality. - Lama Yeshe
During the retreat, Stephan Pende gives an introduction to flexible awareness. Then he guides a meditation on being with physical and emotional discomfort in meditation using flexible awareness.
Explanation of stable awareness, guided meditation, and explanation of walking meditation.
Insight into the nature of mind is the liberating seeing within the Mahayana tradition. How can you turn your attention to itself? How can you become aware of being aware?
Insight into the nature of mind is the liberating seeing within the Mahayana tradition. How can you turn your attention to itself? How can you become aware of being aware?
Drop your Banana - Spring Retreat - Part 2 - Morning Meditation by Stephan Pende Wormland
Introduction to the spring retreat 2019 in Sweden. This retreat is about the most important thing: Essence Love. And dropping the Bananas which prevent you to contact and be Essence Love.
We struggle because our usual way of seeing distorts reality. Vipassana is learning to see yourself and others in a way that liberates. How to do that?
Meditation on Co-dependent arising is one of the main methods to have a deep insight into the nature of reality. Since everything is dependent on everything else, nothing can exist in an independent, separate, autonomous way.
Meditation on Co-dependent arising is one of the main methods to have a deep insight into the nature of reality. Since everything is dependent on everything else, nothing can exist in an independent, separate, autonomous way.
Realizing emptiness with the Sevenfold Reasoning of Chandakirti. The self too cannot inherently be: 1) the same entity as the aggregates; 2) other than the aggregates; 3) in the aggregates; and so too, really: 4) the aggregates are not in the self somehow; 5) the self does not possess the aggregates; 6) it is not the collection of the aggregates; 7) it is not the shape of the aggregates, nor is it their continuum in time.
Saying yes to your experience as it reduces your resistance and with that, you move into a space of less suffering. Saying yes gives you the space to respond to the situation and to emotions in a more balanced way.
Saying yes to your experience as it reduces your resistance and with that, you move into a space of less suffering. Saying yes gives you the space to respond to the situation and to emotions in a more balanced way.
Identifying the mistaken sense of self is an important step to free you from self-limiting projections and habits.
Identifying the mistaken sense of self is an important step to free you from self-limiting projections and habits.
Theravada Vipassana is the insight into the three characteristics, anicca dukkha, and anatta. Whatever the meditation object, it is changing, it is not satisfying you, and it is not you. Stephan Pende gives an explanation of how to see dukkha and anatta.
Theravada Vipassana is the insight into the three characteristics, anicca dukkha, and anatta. Whatever the meditation object, it is changing, it is not satisfying you, and it is not you. Stephan Pende gives an explanation of how to see dukkha and anatta.
Dullness in meditation is seductive and a dead end. How can we detect dullness and what to do about it?
For many of us the biggest obstacle in the process of awakenig is a feeling of not being good enough, feelings of unworthiness and self-hatred. Stephan Pende shares a simple practice on how to transform this self-limiting pattern.
Serious Meditation is destabilizing and should lead to an identity crisis. This is not mentioned in the marketing of Well-being Mindfulness courses. It is helpful to have a map of the territory and guidance on how to move through the challenges.
Serious Meditation is destabilizing and should lead to an identity crisis. This is not mentioned in the marketing of Well-being Mindfulness courses. It is helpful to have a map of the territory and guidance on how to move through the challenges.
The Bodhicharyavatara (The Way of a Bodhisattva) is one of the most treasured text within the Tibetan tradition. The text was written by the eighth-century sage Shantideva. It is remarkably relevant for our times, describing the steps to cultivate courage, caring and joy – the keys to healing ourselves and our troubled world.
The default state of your mind and heart is joy. How can we access joy in our practice and in daily life? How can we relax the patterns which disconnect us from innate joy?
Join this guided meditation and prayer in a Swedish Buddhist center for the midterm election in the States. Tsewa is a Tibetan word for kindness and warm-heartedness.
You have overcome gross distractions and strong dullness, but there is a tendency to slip into stable subtle dullness. This makes the breath sensations less vivid and causes peripheral awareness to fade.
As your mind grows calmer and more stable in this Stage, you will experience a deep purification. Stored unconscious residues from the past well up to the surface and are released. The result is a profound healing. You don’t have to do anything to help things along. This purification is a natural process of the mind. Simply allow it to unfold organically.
As your mind grows calmer and more stable in this Stage, you will experience a deep purification. Stored unconscious residues from the past well up to the surface and are released. The result is a profound healing. You don’t have to do anything to help things along. This purification is a natural process of the mind. Simply allow it to unfold organically.
The biggest challenge during this Stage is forgetting, but sleepiness often becomes a problem as well.
Learn to shorten the periods of mind-wandering and extend the periods of sustained attention to the meditation object.
Stage One involves the simple practice of keeping your attention on the breath. This is easier said than done. You will discover that attention is easily captured by a distraction, making you forget that you’re supposed to be paying attention to the breath. Forgetting quickly leads to mind-wandering, which can last a few seconds, several minutes, or the entire meditation session.
Summer Retreat Sweden - Part 30 - Meditation and Explanation Walking Meditation by Stephan Pende Wormland
Summer Retreat Sweden - Part 27 - Meditation and Teaching on stable attention by Stephan Pende Wormland
Summer Retreat Sweden - Part 21 - Evening Practice and questions by Stephan Pende Wormland
Summer Retreat Sweden - Part 16 - Evening practice and Dipa Ma Story by Stephan Pende Wormland
Summer Retreat Sweden - Part 11 - Evening practice and explanation of 8 Mahayana Precepts by Stephan Pende Wormland
Summer Retreat Sweden - Part 9 - Being with emotional discomfort by Stephan Pende Wormland
Summer Retreat Sweden - Part 5 - Evening with Prajnaparamita Practice by Stephan Pende Wormland
Recordings from the summer retreat 2018 in Sweden. One of the most important resource in your life is tenderness (tib. Tsewa), the warm and open energy in your heart. How can you make contact with this essential capacity and learn to give and receive Tsewa? Stephan Pende introduces you to some time-tested methods from the Tibetan Tradition to awaken Tsewa in your body and mind.
One of the most important resource in your life is tenderness (tib. Tsewa), the warm and open energy in your heart. How can you make contact with this essential capacity and learn to give and receive Tsewa? Stephan Pende introduces you to some time-tested methods from the Tibetan Tradition to awaken Tsewa in your body and mind. Tsewa is a powerful source of healing, creativity, joy, meaning, and courage.
One of the most important resource in your life is tenderness (tib. Tsewa), the warm and open energy in your heart. How can you make contact with this essential capacity and learn to give and receive Tsewa? Stephan Pende introduces you to some time-tested methods from the Tibetan Tradition to awaken Tsewa in your body and mind. Tsewa is a powerful source of healing, creativity, joy, meaning, and courage.
I’ve found it helpful to think of existence—the entire play of sounds and thoughts and bodies and trees—as the foreground of life, and awareness as the background. In the Zen tradition, the shift from focusing on the foreground of experience to resting in pure being is called “the backward step.” Whenever we step out of thought or emotional reactivity and remember the presence that is here, we are taking the backward step. If we wake from a confining story of who we are and reconnect with our essential awareness, we are taking the backward step. When our attention shifts from a narrow fixation on any object—sound, sensation, thought—and recognizes the awake space that holds everything, we are taking the backward step. We come to this realization when there is nowhere else to step. No anything. We have relaxed back into the immensity and silence of awareness itself. - Tara Brach
I’ve found it helpful to think of existence—the entire play of sounds and thoughts and bodies and trees—as the foreground of life, and awareness as the background. In the Zen tradition, the shift from focusing on the foreground of experience to resting in pure being is called “the backward step.” Whenever we step out of thought or emotional reactivity and remember the presence that is here, we are taking the backward step. If we wake from a confining story of who we are and reconnect with our essential awareness, we are taking the backward step. When our attention shifts from a narrow fixation on any object—sound, sensation, thought—and recognizes the awake space that holds everything, we are taking the backward step. We come to this realization when there is nowhere else to step. No anything. We have relaxed back into the immensity and silence of awareness itself. - Tara Brach
The three principal aspects of the path are emerging from dissatisfaction, opening your heart and dissolving limiting projections. This teaching is based on a short text by the great Tibetan Yogi and scholar Lama Tsong Khapa.
Using the Mantra "I love myself" is a healing practice which builds the foundation for genuine empathy and compassion. Without a sense of self-worth and friendship with your feelings, it is very likely that the teachings of Bodhicitta fall on barren ground.
Stephan Pende invites you to a journey through your experience. The emphasis is on discovering a loving curiosity with everything that arises. Whatever arises, love that!
There are many different objects possible in meditation. Stephan Pende explores different options and helps you to choose the meditation practice which is suitable for you.
Not only are the things outside ourselves empty of the solid, objective reality we project onto them, the same is true for our inner sense of self. We instinctively feel that we exist as something very real, definite, and substantial. We have no doubt about this real me and it seems absurd to think of it as just another hallucination. - Lama Yeshe
Explore effortlessness in meditation. Non-striving, non-controlling, non-interfering, and non-fixing. Explore how to relax your judgement about the content of awareness and rest as awareness.
Meditation is a time when you are not pressuring yourself to perform. You are resting very deeply and relaxing, yet you are paying attention in an easy manner. - Lorin Roche
Stephan Pende gives an introduction to the different meditation techniques in the Buddhist Tradition. He encourages to find your own meditation style by listening to your preferences and rhythms.
Whenever we practice meditation, it is important to try to refrain from criticizing ourselves about how we practice and what comes up in our practice. This would only be training in being hard on ourselves! I want to emphasize the importance of maintaining an atmosphere of unconditional friendliness when you practice and as you take your practice out into the world.
Guided meditation to work with challenging past and future situations. Tonglen is a practice which supports you in healing, forgiving, and letting go of painful situations where your patterns are triggered.
The Jesus story is a mirror that helps us to see ourselves more clearly. The primary function of mythic storytelling is to render life transparent to the underlying transcendence that shines through it. This is the power of storytelling. Storytelling invites us into a creative relationship with the story. - Adyashanti
Jesus symbolizes the spiritual mystery of each one of us and points us toward the radiance within that is available right now.
Dwelling deep within our heart, and within the hearts of all beings without exception, is an inexhaustible source of love and wisdom. And the ultimate purpose of all spiritual practices, whether they are called Buddhist or not, is to uncover and make contact with this essentially pure nature. - Lama Yeshe
The Buddha saw that we suffer because we distort reality. The cause of our stress and struggles are our projections, we are co-creators of the world we live in. What are these distortions and how can we dissolve them?
Before you listen to this track please listen to "Preparing the Ground for Bodhicitta 3".
As the further step in discovering Bodhicitta we find the capacity to care within us. We connect with the soft spot in our heart by connecting with the care and kindness we have received throughout our life.
Wherever you are on your journey, there is another wonderful truth called “Living the Fruit” or “Starting with the Result.” The fruits of well-being and the experience of joy, freedom, and love are available now, whatever your circumstance! - Jack Kornfield
Reframing how you see a difficult person can change you feel about him or her. This is the traditional guided meditation on the "enemy".
In the Tibetan tradition, we prepare the ground for Bodhicitta with equanimity. In this talk, you are introduced to the main methods to discover an openess and kinship with all living beings.
Sometimes it is difficult for us to connect with a genuinely felt sense of warmth and kindness towards ourselves. In this meditation, you learn a method to strengthen this natural quality within you.
How do we prepare ourselves so that we genuinely can open to others? It is important to first heal your own wounds and insecurities. Genuine Bodhicitta can only grow if you come from a stable self-acceptance. Stephan Pende shares traditional approaches to self-healing.
Stephan Pende gives examples on how to practice tonglen in your daily life. Every difficult experience and every wonderful experience gives us the opportunity to open, to soften, to share and to grow. Tonglen is one method to do so.
As spaciousness opens within you, you can experience a profound silence in your very being. You may feel nervous at first, and at the same time, you’ve longed for this. This is the vast silence that surrounds life. Trust it and rest in the stillness. Feel your heart open and become more fully alive. Everything that arises from this silence is only a cloud in the vast sky, a wave on the ocean. Rest in the depths of silence. - Jack Kornfield
The deep, peaceful clarity of our essential mind is in the nature of love, and in this calm atmosphere the disturbances of hatred and anger have no place. While absorbed in this deep state of awareness, there is no chance for a harmful thought to agitate us. It is not a question of consciously deciding to refrain from anger and behave virtuously; this loving, benevolent feeling arises spontaneously and effortlessly, from the depths of our being. - Lama Yeshe
The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering — ours and that which is all around us — everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming the fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us.
We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and whom we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy, or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other’s pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain or our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.
Tonglen can be translated as "taking in and sending out." It is a Buddhist practice that can assist us in countering the human tendency to resist emotional discomfort. Instead of engaging in the habitual response of pushing away pain, the practice of tonglen invites us to bring the discomfort close. It is totally counter-intuitive, yet it is a profound way to cultivate inner peace and compassion.
Tonglen practice, also known as “taking and sending,” reverses our usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure. In tonglen practice, we visualize taking in the pain of others with every in-breath and sending out whatever will benefit them on the out-breath. In the process, we become liberated from age- old patterns of selfishness. We begin to feel love for both ourselves and others; we begin to take care of ourselves and others. - Pema Chodron
We base our lives on seeking happiness and avoiding suffering, but the best thing we can do for ourselves — and for the planet — is to turn this whole way of thinking upside down. If we’re ready to try staying present with our pain, one of the greatest supports we could ever find is to cultivate the warmth and simplicity of bodhichitta. The word bodhichitta has many translations, but probably the most common one is “awakened heart.” The word refers to a longing to wake up from ignorance and delusion in order to help others do the same. - Pema Chodron
We insist on being Someone, with a capital S. We get security from defining ourselves as worthless or worthy, superior or inferior. We waste precious time exaggerating or romanticizing or belittling ourselves with a complacent surety that yes, that’s who we are. We mistake the openness of our being - the inherent wonder and surprise of each moment - for a solid, irrefutable self. Because of this misunderstanding, we suffer. - Pema Chödrön
Phenomena do exist, but they don't exist in the manner in which they appear. They don't exist in a independent, absolute way. They are empty of inherent existence. The view of emptiness is not a negation of phenomena, it is a negation of a specific manner of existence. The object of negation must be understood.
Chitta means “mind” and also “heart” or “attitude.” Bodhi means “awake,” “enlightened,” or “completely open.” Sometimes the completely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love. Even the cruelest people have this soft spot. Even the most vicious animals love their offspring. As Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche put it, “Everybody loves something, even if it’s only tortillas.” - Pema Chodron
“Stay close” is an invitation to become intimate with the energy of your emotions, to befriend them and to trust their natural evolution. “Do nothing” points to the practice of giving space, allowing and letting be as a valid response to a difficult moment. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if “Doing nothing” was more encouraged in our world and in our spiritual practices? Not as a resignation but as an expression of trust into our basic goodness and self-healing capacity.
Stephan Pende gives an introduction to Medicine Buddha and then leads a short practice. The practice connects you with your innate healing powers to bring healing to yourself and others.
Stephan Pende explains how to work with discomfort in your meditation practice. He also explores how to benefit from traditional rituals in your daily practice without them becoming a straight jacket.
It is important to have a structure for your daily meditation practice which is inspiring and wholesome. Stephan Pende helps you to find your own style in your practice. Our meditation practice can be effortless and joyful.
Establishing a daily meditation practice might be the best gift you can give to yourself and the people you meet every day. Stephan Pende encourages you to honour your preferences and your discomfort in your daily sitting.
Jesus was a Rebel, Buddha was a Rebel. What about you? Stephan Pende invites you to rely on your inner Rebel to protect you from bullshit in the traditional approaches to meditation. How can you cultivate a wholesome meditation practice without putting on a straightjacket?
This is a practice that you can do for a real-life situation you meet in daily life. Whenever you meet a situation that awakens your compassion or that is painful and difficult for you, you can stop for a moment, breathe in any suffering that you see, and breathe out a sense of relief. It is a simple and direct process. Unlike the formal practice, it does not involve any visualizations or steps. It's a simple and natural exchange: you see suffering, you take it in with the inbreath, you send out relief with the outbreath.
Tonglen, or the practice of sending and taking, reverses the process of hardening and shutting down by cultivating love and compassion. In tonglen practice, instead of running from pain and discomfort, we acknowledge them and own them fully. Instead of dwelling on our own problems, we put ourselves in other people's shoes and appreciate our shared humanity. Then the barriers start to dissolve, our hearts and minds begin to open.
Practicing Tonglen is a powerful way to connect with yourself and all of humanity. We all experience sadness and other "negative" emotions at different times, yet when we do, we often feel very alone in it. This practice reminds us that we're not alone when we are in pain. If we have the courage to break the habitual pattern of pushing away the pain, we can experience deep compassion for ourselves and all beings.
The standing posture makes it possible to incorporate meditation into our daily lives. It requires practice, but once we get used to it, we can do it almost anywhere — standing on line, at the crosswalk, and in elevators. With our physical body aligned in a particular way chi or prana - life-force energy - is encouraged to find its natural rhythm as it flows through the meridian system, gently dissolving any blockages that may have been preventing this.
Stephan Pende gives a short introduction into the four steps of tonglen and then leads a meditation helping you to connect with your resource, your refuge. This is the first important step in the practice of tonglen.
Tonglen can be translated as "taking in and sending out." It is a Buddhist practice that can assist us in countering the human tendency to resist emotional discomfort. Instead of engaging in the habitual response of pushing away pain, the practice of tonglen invites us to bring the discomfort close. It is totally counter-intuitive, yet it is a profound way to cultivate inner peace and compassion.
Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we begin to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension of our being. At first we experience this as things not being such a big deal or as solid as they seemed before. - Pema Chodron
The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering - ours and that which is all around us - everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us. -Pema Chodron
After you have identified the natural face of innermost awareness through ascertaining it in yourself, once it is experienced as underneath you like your own bed, your experiential floor, no matter what sort of conceptuality occurs, whether thoughts spread out or withdraw and cease, it is not necessary to intentionally work at stopping those conceptions. Rather, when good or bad conceptions dawn, whether good things happen or bad things happen, you realize on all occasions that these dawn from within the sphere of this unimpeded, penetrating innermost awareness that you have already identified, and when they cease, they cease into it. - Dalai Lama
To practice self-inquiry, we can quiet the mind and ask “Who am I?” or “Who is aware right now?” or “Who is listening?” Then we can look gently back into awareness to see what is true. Ultimately, we find that there is no way for the mind to answer the question - there is no “thing” to actually see or feel. The point is simply to look, then to let go into the no-thing-ness that is here. The question “Who am I?” is meant to dissolve the sense of a searcher. - Tara Brach
No matter what kind of consciousness we might consider, the clear light of innermost awareness pervades it. Ice, even when it is solid and very hard, does not pass beyond the nature of water. In the same way, no matter how gross, tough, or coarse conceptions might be, the place from which they dawn and the place into which they vanish when we no longer think them does not pass beyond innermost awareness. - Dalai Lama
The whole point of meditation or prayer or whatever we are trying to do is to discover the fundamental principle of human nature, to go into this deep nature, to touch our mind, the fundamental principle of totality, nonduality. The moment we reach this experience there is no room for heavy concepts, heavy emotions or sentimentality. Just be! At the moment of this experience, there are no concepts labeled by the dualistic mind. At such a time there is no Buddha, no God, no heaven or hell. Just being - the great peace, the great satisfaction. - Lama Yeshe
Our fundamental awareness, Vajrayana asserts, prior to all patterns of self-centered clinging, is essentially unconditioned, pure and undefiled. Our basic awareness is a limitless expanse of emptiness and cognizance, like boundless space pervaded by sunlight, already endowed with all-encompassing wisdom and compassion.
The traditional image of equanimity is a banquet to which everyone is invited. Training in equanimity is learning to open the door to all, welcoming all beings, inviting life to come visit. Of course, as certain guests arrive, we’ll feel fear and aversion. We allow ourselves to open the door just a crack if that’s all that we can presently do, and we allow ourselves to shut the door when necessary. Cultivating equanimity is a work in progress. We aspire to spend our lives training in the loving-kindness and courage that it takes to receive whatever appears – sickness, health, poverty, wealth, sorrow, and joy. We welcome and get to know them all. - Pema Chodron
The wisdom taught in Mahayana traditions opens us to others in compassionate intimacy not only through insight into their condition but also through recognition of the ultimately undivided nature of all that exists. The non-dual wisdom of emptiness recognizes all beings as undivided from oneself in the empty, inter-dependent ground of all things (Sanskrit dharmadhatu), which supports an all-embracing, unconditional compassion for all creatures.
Compassion and wisdom are interrelated in varying ways within three leading Buddhist traditions. In early and Theravada Buddhism, compassion is a power for deep mental purification, protection, and healing that can support inner freedom. In Mahayana Buddhism, compassion becomes the primary means to empower and communicate a non-conceptual wisdom in which self and others are experienced as undivided. In Vajrayana Buddhism, unconditional compassion radiates forth all inclusively as a spontaneous expression of the mind’s deepest unconditioned nature. - John Makransky
Look again and again at what cannot be seen. At some point you see nothing - you really see nothing. You know, through your own experience, that there is no you in you, no fixed point, nothing. That experience makes all the difference. - Ken Mcleod
What is that stillness, that space, in which reactions arise and disappear? When you look at it, you see nothing at all. It is a bit frightening. It is like looking into the void of outer space. Something in you shrinks back. This is the other level of patience, letting your reactions to infinite nothingness come and go. - Ken Mcloed
Transcendental generosity is generally misunderstood in the study of the Buddhist scriptures as meaning being kind to someone who is lower than you. Someone has this pain and suffering and you are in a superior position and can save them—which is a very simple-minded way of looking down on someone. But in the case of the bodhisattva, generosity is not so callous. It is something very strong and powerful; it is communication. - Trungpa Rinpoche
What you experience is your mind. Your mind is not a thing. It is not located anywhere. Your mind is what you experience. What you experience is your mind. It is a bit like a dream. - Ken Mcleod
The panic that you are experiencing is not going to hurt you. Although it may feel like you are in danger because of this anxiety, and it is completely normal to feel that way.... you are not in danger. Anxiety will not harm you.
Working with Shenpa. In English, shenpa is generally translated as "attachment." But, some words, such as "shenpa" convey many dimensions which cannot be covered by a single term. Rather, shenpa is a pervasive discomfort; it is the underlying sense of “I, me and mine” and all the wants, needs, aversions, hopes, and fears that come out of that. So, shenpa will be found in our attachments and aversions, our stupidity, pride and jealousies. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is. We suffer because we try to make pleasurable what is painful, to make solid what is fluid, to make permanent what is always changing. We try to make ourselves into something real and unchanging when our fundamental state of being is unconditionally open and ungraspable.
The whole point of meditation or prayer or whatever we are trying to do is to discover the fundamental principle of human nature, to go into this deep nature, to touch our mind, the fundamental principle of totality, nonduality. The moment we reach this experience there is no room for heavy concepts, heavy emotions or sentimentality. Just be! At the moment of this experience, there are no concepts labeled by the dualistic mind. At such a time there is no Buddha, no God, no heaven or hell. Just being—the great peace, the great satisfaction. -Lama Yeshe
The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering — ours and that which is all around us — everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us.
In this guided meditation you are invited to connect with the goodness and care you have received in the previous year. Gratefulness is a very healing mental attitude.
All Buddhist traditions consider it important to understand the selflessness of the individual in order to gain liberation from suffering. The reason for this is that all suffering comes from believing the self is truly existent. This results in taking the self and everything that affects it very seriously, and we become fixated on pursuing happiness and avoiding suffering. But in fact, the self does not exist in a separate, solid, independent way. It is made up through the mental process of selfing, like the self that appears in a dream.
If we check within ourselves we will discover that all our misery comes from either attachment or hatred. These, in turn, come from an incorrect view of the self. Even at this moment we hold the “I” to be true. In the Madhyamakavatara, Chandrakirti stated that all emotional afflictions arise from ignorance—misapprehension of the nature of the self. This is the root. In order to get rid of all the branches of suffering and prevent them from ever arising again, we need to sever this root.
Guided meditation through the dissolution of the death process into the unknown. The dawn of the clear light mind opens the space into the deathless.
Celebrating life through contemplating death. Knowing that you are dying, not knowing when, what is important in your life? What do you hold back? Where do you want to turn to at the time of death?
When we connect to the Stillness within, we move beyond our thoughts and emotions and discover great depths of peace, contentment, and serenity.
We usually think of our mind as just thoughts and emotions, but according to the teachings of Buddha, these make up only one aspect of the mind. The teachings tell us that the mind has two aspects: the appearance of mind, and, more important, the essence or nature of mind. The appearances of mind are like the rays of light streaming from the sun, while the very nature of mind is like the sun itself in all its glory. The teachings tell us, rather than trying to understand each thought and emotion that arises in our mind, instead we should try to understand the nature of mind itself. When we understand the nature of mind, it is one-medicine for all ills. By knowing one thing we come to know all.
No matter what kind of consciousness we might consider, the clear light of innermost awareness pervades it. Ice, even when it is solid and very hard, does not pass beyond the nature of water. In the same way, no matter how gross, tough, or coarse conceptions might be, the place from which they dawn and the place into which they vanish when we no longer think about them does not pass beyond innermost awareness. -His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Guided meditation to settle down and call upon the help and support of all the Buddhas. Shifting attention from the content of your experience to that which is aware.
I have great interest in the statement by many wise persons in all the orders of Tibetan Buddhism that their systems come down to the same final principle, and I feel that this is what I should and must explain. Such an exploration may be controversial, but in any case, these great scholar–yogis say that all these systems come down to the same final basic insight, the same principle, because there is indeed a final basic experience on which they all alight. There is no way they would say this just to be polite. Once there must be such a place of coming together, what is it? His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Committing to our anxiety is the difficult work of training ourselves not to try to escape our anxious feelings. It even means to appreciate them, feel them, and see for ourselves whether they are as much of a problem as we think they will be. If anxiety is not a problem and if we understand that it's actually an essential part of our path of waking up, then we might want to practice this attitude of commitment. - Bruce Tift
Anxiety is a necessary part of our path. As we move in the direction of waking up, increasing our tolerance of more and more awareness or open mind, we will inevitably experience anxiety. At some point or another, anybody committed to the spiritual path may find it important to commit to the experience of anxiety as an approximation of an open state of mind. - Bruce Tift
In these six verses Tokme Zongpo describes how to practice in the face of injury, insult or the incomprehensible - situations that commonly provoke anger and rage. In all these situations you use anger as a basis for the taking and sending practice (tonglen).
Beings are numberless: may I free them all. Reactions are endless: may I release them all. Doors to experience are infinite: my I enter them all. Ways of awakening are limitless: may I know them all.
Self-Denigration is one of the biggest obstacles to bring forth Bodhicitta, the awakened heart. Stephan Pende shares methods to break through the trance of unworthiness and connect with your inner beauty and peace. The teachings and experience of Buddha-Nature are fundamental for us because we are coming from a culture of guilt and shame.
In the end, however, all you have is awareness, the quality of knowing that is present in every moment of experience - indefinable, indescribable, non-conceptual knowing. It seems to be nothing at all, yet it is there - clear and present - and experience just arises, without restriction. Can you trust that knowing? Can you trust that clarity? Can you trust your own experience? - Ken Mcleod
Forget about being good or bad. Bring attention to your life. Experience what is actually happening in you. Know what you are doing and how it affects others. - Ken Mcleod
A guided meditation to help you gently move into a zone of peace and calm in preparation for sleep. Allow yourself to let go of the business of the day and find the silence within.
A guided meditation with nature sounds which helps you to let go of anxiety and restlessness. Stephan Pende leads you into sleep through gentle instructions of letting be and letting go.
Give up your life. Give it all up. Do not base your life on what can be taken away from you - wealth, possessions, health, family, friends, fame, respect, even your own life. If you have those, savor them, knowing that they all must come to an end. But do not base your life on holding on to them. - Ken Mcleod
From birth, and throughout every moment of your life, being is a quiet background presence that’s always with you but that can go unnoticed until it’s directly pointed out. Take a few moments now to feel back through your life and notice how the feeling of being has always been with you. To realize that you are Being is freedom.
Compassion isn't some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we're trying to live up to. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don't even want to look at.
Rely on silence! You become aware of a silence - a silence that is always there, even in your darkest moments, a silence that includes everything and cannot be fathomed, a silence that allows you to listen to your heart, your body and your mind in a way you did not know was possible. Rely on Silence! - Ken Mcleod
Recognize what is going on; Allow the experience to be there, just as it is; Investigate with kindness; Natural awareness, which comes from not identifying with the experience.
Every experience has infinite dimensions. Can you experience all of them without struggling against any of them? If you can, then suffering comes to an end - so obvious, so simple, so deep, and so wonderful. -Ken Mcleod
Awareness has a natural sensitivity and the capacity to express warmth. This responsiveness is what is called tenderness. Our tenderness allows us to respond with compassion, love, and awe to whatever arises, in all its beauty and sorrow.
Stephan Pende invites you to sense the tension or sensations in your body that are present. What happens if you really meet, greet, and welcome sensation without trying to get rid of it?. In natural meditation you are not trying to change. Instead, you learn to welcome yourselves as you are; to be with what is. Let’s start with who we are, as we are, and see who we become when we accept who we are, as we are, and stop trying to be somebody or something else.
According to the Tibetan tradition the emotional patterns that dictate our inner sense of balance or imbalance are functions of the subtle body. The subtle body is a kind of interface between the mind and the physical body, by means which these two aspects of being interact. The Tibetan word for the subtle body is lung, in sanskrit prana and in the chinese tradition it is called chi. Stephan Pende introduces how awareness of the subtle body can support you in times of challenging emotions.
When it comes to the true nature of mind, this isn't something that we get from a spiritual tradition or religion. It's not something that we need to seek from a guru or that we need to find by going to a sacred place, but it's a matter of recognizing who we are, whatever that it is. When we see this completely clearly, when who we actually are becomes completely evident and obvious to us, and we recognize it and appreciate it in a completely perfect way, then that I think is what is called recognizing the true nature of mind. Then we fully make this a reality for ourselves. – 17th Karmapa
Bodhisattvas practice 'in the middle of the fire.' This means they enter into the suffering of the world; it also means they stay steady with the fire of their own painful emotions. They neither act them out nor repress them. They are willing to stay 'on the dot' and explore an emotion's ungraspable qualities and fluid energies - and to let that experience link them to the pain and courage of others. Compassionate abiding is a method which can help us to do this. - Pema Chodrön
You already have everything to be complete in this moment. There is nothing to do and nothing to understand for you to relax into the truth of peace. Stephan Pende is guiding you into the place which you never left. Home is here, there is no path.
All Buddhist traditions consider it important to understand the selflessness of the individual in order to gain liberation from suffering. The reason for this is that all suffering comes from believing the self is truly existent. This results in taking the self and everything that affects it very seriously, and we become fixated on pursuing happiness and avoiding suffering. But in fact, the self does not exist in a separate, solid, independent way. It is made up through the mental process of selfing, like the self that appears in a dream.
It is helpful is to become aware of the inner judge. The inner judge is an agency within us that criticizes, judges, compares, condemns, blames and attacks us and others mercilessly and constantly. Stephan Pende share insights and meditations on how to cultivate self-compassion.
Meditation takes us just as we are, with our restlessness and our peace. This radical acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness. It is a simple, direct relationship with the present moment just as it is.
When you attentively look into stillness you find greater stillness. Look clearly into the greater stillness to find greater stillness yet. Continue to easily yet attentively look into greater and greater stillness. If your awareness shifts to thoughts, return again to stillness and greater stillness.
What you’re looking for, is what is doing the looking. That which sees and looks is what is looked for! And that can’t be found. Because it’s not been lost. It’s been looking all along. At the deepest level, you’re holding the answer you’ve been looking for. The answer is in your hands. It’s in your own being. You ARE what you’re looking for. You ARE What you’ve always longed for.
Your physical posture affects your mental state. If you assume a posture that is too relaxed, chances are that your meditation will stray into drowsiness. Too rigid and tense a posture, on the other hand, might lead to mental agitation. Thus it is appropriate to take a balanced posture that is neither too tight nor too loose. Stephan Pende points to the keys of a healthy posture: alignment, relaxation and resilience.
All of us are caught up in addictive patterns. Stephan Pende presents how meditation can release us from the grip of negative habits and addictions that block a full and meaningful life. We can learn how to undo our habits and addictions and find true contentment. Stephan Pende also leads two meditations to develop familiarity with states of mind that can release us from addictive patterns.
All of us are caught up in addictive patterns. Stephan Pende presents how meditation can release us from the grip of negative habits and addictions that block a full and meaningful life. We can learn how to undo our habits and addictions and find true contentment. Stephan Pende also leads two meditations to develop familiarity with states of mind that can release us from addictive patterns.
Stephan Pende explains and guides a meditation on how to recognize and rest as awareness or what sometimes is called the nature of your mind.
Mindfulness supports you in your capacity to be present in moments of emotional turmoil, neither suppressing the feelings nor getting lost in them. Stephan Pende shares methods on how to be in an emotional tsunami.
Awakening begins by discovering the awareness which is already free, pure, connected and in the nature of love. It is discovering the natural peace, the deep stillness which is available to us in any moment regardless if we feel good or bad. Can you find the eye in the storm? Rest right there.
There is a simple, obvious truth: there is no such entity as “me”. That is the main insight in all paths of liberation. There is no separate, solid entity called "me" or "self" anywhere to be found. The sense that there is something like that is the root cause for all suffering. Because of this mistake you feel you live in a prison, spending your life protecting and trying to make happy something that was never there to begin with. Seeing through this illusion is simple and straightforward.
Former monk Stephan Pende leads a meditation on cultivating a loving gaze and explains how to find peace in the midst of intense experience. He explores how to work with the subconscious gossip, which is obstructing a direct relationship with our experience.
This guided meditation is an invitation for you to experience deep relaxation, to find peace in doing nothing. Just tune in to the incredible feeling of stillness within you. Within the movements of your thoughts, there is a still point. A point that is completely still and which has nothing to do with whatever is happening around you. Becoming aware of this ever present peace is the ultimate medicine.
Gratefulness is a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness, and appreciation for life. Emerging research has recently started to draw attention to its multiple benefits. People who are grateful have been found to be relatively happier, more energetic, and more hopeful and to report experiencing more frequent positive emotions. Stephan Pende guides you into a gratefulness meditation using a simple mantra.
It is painful to exclude a person from your heart. In this meditation you are invited to soften that pain and see a difficult person in a different way. It might change the way you relate to that person as well.
So who are you? You are not objects out there, you are not feelings, you are not thoughts - you are effortlessly aware of all those, so you are not those. Who or what are you? You have feelings, but you are not those feelings. Who are you? But then people usually make a big mistake. They think that if they rest in the Witness, they are going to see something or feel something - something really neat and special. But you won't see anything. If you see something, that is just another object - another feeling, another thought, another sensation, another image. But those are all objects; those are what you are not.
Tonglen (giving and taking) is a method for connecting with suffering — ours and that which is all around us — everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we begin to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality.
Making death your friend to awake to your life. Contemplating death is a powerful pointer to what is really important. Celebrate your life by remembering death.
Allowing is effortless, but it takes effort to not allow this moment. For this moment is already present, already perfectly what it is. In the vastness of your own heart even resistance is allowed.
How does your meditation practice benefit your relationships? Stephan Pende explores how the qualities you cultivate in meditation like equanimity, stability and self-kindness support you in your relationships.
Former Buddhist monk Stephan Pende explores a liberating way to relate to our fears: not as something to try to get rid of or cast out, but as something we become very intimate with. In doing so we come to find that the journey of knowing fear is in fact the journey of courage. From this wisdom, we learn to embrace the fullness of our experience in life.
Being in a place in which you can rest and see more clearly, which holds and contains everything arising for you in the present. From here, it is possible to deconstruct, re-contextualize and reframe our original fear-based feelings and reactions, honoring and embracing them without being their victims.
My assumption is that, at this moment, you can open the door to peace without becoming someone else or being in another place. Just by looking inside, at what is and embracing it with a loving heart. Right now you could step into this place. This place is so close to you that you oversee it. There is stillness and peace in the background of the wanting, dissatisfied mind. There is underlying peace and stillness, beyond these words, in this room, wherever you are dear reader, right now! Could you allow yourself, just for a moment to find that place of rest?
We can suppress anger and aggression or act it out, either way making things worse for ourselves and others. Or we can practice patience: wait, experience the anger and investigate its nature.
What you need to do is to neither reject nor indulge in your own emotional energy, but instead come to know it. Then you can transmute the energy of emotions into wisdom. You could gain the capacity to slow down, feel the energy in our body, drop the story line and let it pass trough your body and mind. Stephan Pende shares tools to transform anger into healthy, compassionate aggression. In that way your anger can become a contribution to inner and outer peace.
Stephan Pende explores in this teaching the two basic levels of mind: the unconditioned and conditioned level. When we rest in unconditioned awareness, our dualistic fixations and with that our stressful thoughts are completely inactive. There’s no attachment or aversion to anything that arises within our field of awareness and no attempt to prolong or escape what is happening. We discover a place of peace and wholeness which is always available to us. Conditioned mind, on the other hand, is characterized by the presence of dualistic fixations – our likes and dislikes. Any sense of lack, judgment and dissatisfaction is a function of the conditioned mind.
The breath can be the resting point you return to during daily life. Stephan Pende guides a gentle breathing meditation which helps you to find a peaceful place in the midst of your experience.
Could you allow yourself to find a place of rest in the middle of your experience? Just being yourself is all what is needed to be content. Stephan Pende guides you in this short Meditation to a place of peace in the midst of a busy day.
In this meditation you are invited to connect with the warmth of a friendship and from there your are gently guided to a place of radical self-acceptance. From resting in the open heart sharing your love happens naturally and without effort.
A guided meditation into the present moment for to be used in a busy life. Take a rest of 5 minutes and do nothing. Connect with the natural peace in your own heart.
Gentle Breathing Meditation, helping you to connect with the natural peace of this moment. Allow yourself to find a place of rest by breathing in kindness towards yourself.
In this Meditation you are invited to approach an area of emotional or physical discomfort and hold it softly. Trusting the healing and transformative power of mindful acceptance. A meditation for difficult moments!
When we practice mindfulness meditation, many things arise in awareness. We typically turn our attention to each thing in turn - different thoughts, feelings, body sensations, states of mind. We often don’t turn our attention to that which is doing the observing, that which seems to be doing the thinking, that which is aware. This is what you are invited to do in this meditation - to actually seek, in a very practical way, who it is that is doing the seeking, who it is that is practicing. Of course, you say, I am seeking, I am practicing. But who is this I? Can you show it to me? When we turn to look for it, what do we find?
An invitation to slide into a place of fulfillment by letting the moment be just as it is. If you stop to struggle with reality there is peace.
Guided Body-scan to gently slide into a deep relaxation, connecting with the natural peace of your mind.
A guided meditation into the present moment, connecting with the primordial peace of your own being. Just being here, now, in a place where you have everything you need.