The development of insight comes from feeling experience as it arises. Detachment, dispassion and relinquishment enable the allowing of phenomena, witnessing of change, and letting go of making it personal. We’re able to be truly present and in touch with what’s happening.
How can we avoid the pitfalls that Mara sets for us on the path? Develop Sati (mindfulness) to act as a gatekeeper that can recognize the earliest signs of delusion, ill will, and greed. At the same time, cultivate paññā, wisdom and sharp discernment to protect against unskillful speech, conduct, and intention or thought. These foundational practices will be both refuge and rescue from the snares of Mara!
The beginning of insight is knowing what’s helpful and not, recognizing causes and conditions. We learn to meet difficult thoughts and feelings in skillful ways. Calming the body, using gentle and receptive gestures, we learn to listen to and soothe the crazy mind. One starts to see that negative experiences are not the problem but the sense of self that identifies with all of it.
We’re conditioned to make a self out of sense consciousness, but everything simply arises out of causes and conditions. We practice with right view and deep attention to meet what arises directly, see it as phenomena arising and changing.
To harvest the real riches of the journey, seek refuge and protection in wisdom; and gain profound peace and happiness through the practice of loving-kindness, compassion and forgiveness. These qualities of reconciliation uphold virtue, concord, care and respect so that we can befriend what is noble and realize the truth for ourselves. Even in the darkest hour, remember what you love, awaken the highest from within you, and light the path to freedom.
We use a meditation theme like mindfulness of breathing to bring about the factors of awakening. These factors are not things we can do, they come about under the right conditions. Tend to the heart and body energies, bringing them together to hold your ground against the hinderances and make way for the factors of awakening.
As we begin our meditation, establish a reference that helps us to be with rather than be in. Be the ‘knower of the worlds’, aware of the danger and getting stuck. Body can be that reference, it gives a sense of here-ness. Widen awareness and be choosy with attention.
Breathing gets conditioned by how we live our lives – energy can be mottled and unbalanced. It is a signifier of the heart. We can take time during retreat to take samādhi as a way of life, unifying body, heart and mind to bring into fruition the factors of awakening.
We make contact with external phenomena, and the impressions and meanings resonate through the heart and mind. Make skillful contact – pick up that which is worthy, that which lifts the heart.
Meditation is a time to crystalize the training, to deeply take in and feel the teachings. In these pause moments we take heed, look deeply into the heart, come to know the experience of what stirs it up – clinging, aversion, becoming. We begin to prefer relinquishment, finding it a freer more livable options.
