Dharmakaya — Teaching wellbeing through the skills of awareness

Practice puts the teachings into action. Ultimately, teachings are just descriptions, and each concept is only truly understood through personal experience. Just as a menu suggests taste sensations, but the actual experience comes from eating, true understanding—and its related benefits—comes from practice.

Meditation is the foundational practice, but there are many forms—and many ways to integrate practice into daily life.

How Meditation Works

Successful practice is based on good intentions; supported by conditions such as loving kindness; and tempered by wisdom and the understanding of reality.

The ultimate discovery in meditation is the experience of a pure mind—clear, luminous and free from fear. However, it takes consistent practice to achieve this. After all, the mind is like a spoiled child running wild. But we cannot understand the nature of our minds if we cannot slow them down to really examine them. Our job is to be the parents, to tame our minds.

Stillness Meditation

Our minds are very distracted; our senses constantly pull in multiple directions—every sound, every sight, every scent triggers thoughts and emotions, creating movement and confusion. Only when things are still can the dust settle and the mind’s eye see clearly. Stillness Meditation is linked to serenity; the practices are designed to still an active mind, ultimately enabling it to be present in the moment.

Generative Meditation

Generative practices are designed to develop the inner qualities of wisdom by moving outside our normal boundaries, expanding the ways in which we typically see and think. Where stillness meditation is an undoing by quieting and pacifying our thoughts, generative mediation is a doing by actively generating positive emotions and thoughts.

Analytic Meditation

Without practice, we are simply wealthy misers; though we have many riches at our disposal, we are still living like paupers.

Our minds are filled with confused thoughts and beliefs; often, even when we recognize logically that our beliefs are wrong, they are so ingrained that they are virtually impossible to shed. By employing vigorous analytical methods and reasoning, we can deconstruct these beliefs, actively examining the concepts we cling to and questioning whether they really exist.

Movement

The energy-body balance is crucial for successful meditation, as well as for physical and emotional health. Consequently, our bodies need to be refreshed, our energy sources need to be regenerated, we need movement to literally open ourselves. In addition, movement practices enable us to slow down and examine our very actions in minute detail; they become a form of both stillness meditation and rational meditation, uniting body and mind.

LIVE BETTER

Life is complex, puzzling and often painful.
Sometimes it seems there must be a better way
to manage—and there is. It is as simple as looking
at a problem through a different lens.

Get Started »

ASK A QUESTION

Whether we are troubled or merely curious,
it can be helpful to turn to someone noted
for wisdom. Rinpoche is pleased to answer questions
about life, the Dharma or Buddhism in general.

Ask Now »