Regular practice

Meditation is the most valuable practice to achieve plenitude and inner peace. It is a learning process that leads us to live with awareness and to come back to our true nature, which is kind-hearted, spacious and bright, and always present, alghough it is now covered by layers of fear, confusion and pain.

On the Buddhist path there are two central meditation practices: calm abiding (shamatha or shiné) and insight (vipashyana or lhagt’ong). In general, calm abiding should precede the practice of insight, because calming the mind enables us to eventually transcend the conceptual mind and reach rigpa wisdom. However, calm in itself is not sufficient. Calm-abiding produces a peaceful state of mind and provides many other advantages for the practitioner, but does not cut the root of ignorance which creates cyclic existence. For that, insight is needed. Furthermore, knowledge alone is not enough because, without calm abiding, knowledge cannot be properly focused and, therefore, it lacks the power and precision necessary to completely cut the root of cyclic existence. Therefore, a Buddhist practitioner always has to develop a state of mind in which both calm abiding and insight are present at the same time.

Practicing meditation requires previously training the mind in discipline and patience.

Led by: Lama Yeshe Chödrön
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