#shamatha

[kongque-jiaan]

Taming an elephant truly is a very apt metaphor for developing concentration because so often when you think you have managed to settle into a nice, relaxed rhythm, suddenly a stray thought goes off that startles the mind and suddenly you are thrown off by a wild beast trampling wherever it pleases.

[deepinsamsara]

"I encourage everyone to practice shamatha followed by self-reflection on a daily basis. As powerful as our negative habits are, they can breathe and stay alive only in states of confusion and ignorance. With repeated effort on the cushion, being in a state of calm-abiding helps illuminate how negative habits are formed and how they can be dissolved. A sense of knowing, understanding, knowledge, and wisdom can only come about from a settled mind turning inward and knowing its own state. Then, confusion has no where to hide and negative habits must fall. Only in reflection on cause and effect - what serves as liberation from suffering, and what binds us to it - can our intention to be happy be aligned with our actions to cultivate happiness. Otherwise, we are just making ourselves a comfortable nest in our negative habits."

-Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

[tsultrimpawo]

Seeing Clearly When we begin to feel the benefits of meditation practice, it is like putting on glasses for the first time. Once we learn to sit with the breath, be with the present moment, and create space between ourselves and our thoughts, our lives come into focus and we awaken to the possibility of something else—the alleviation of suffering. — Jessica Angima, “The High of New Beginnings—and the Joy of What Comes Next” #Shamatha #Vipashyana #ShamathaVipashyana (at New Haven Zen Center) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZURgYFLgzG/?utm_medium=tumblr

[modernmonkeymind]

If you're meditating to get superpowers, be ready to be disappointed. If you're meditating so you can actually live without being dragged around by the asshole in your head, get ready for some serious magic. Just don't expect your whole life to change after your first two minute meditation.

[tsultrimpawo]

[tsultrimpawo]

In shamatha, you are present. At the same time, your mind becomes so transparent, so penetrating and loose, that it becomes like a sieve. You think you are pouring teachings into it, but end up with nothing at all. If the buddhadharma were a theistic religion, based on the worship of a deity or savior, and if you thought you knew perfectly what you were doing, your mind would cease to be a sieve and instead become a cast-iron cauldron. That model seems very sympathetic, because one would like to have something very solid and definite to hold on to as opposed to becoming a sieve. But in the nontheistic tradition, your state of being becomes a sieve with which it is difficult to catch or to hold on to anything. Therefore, in order to understand the essence of the teachings, it is necessary to develop constant awareness.

— Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

[tsultrimpawo]

"We are talking about a very basic and simple act: sitting on the ground, assuming a good posture and developing a sense of our spot, our place on this earth. This is the means of re-discovering our basic goodness; the means to tune ourselves in to genuine reality, without expectation or preconception."

~ Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

[tsultrimpawo]

"Once you attain a basic understanding and experience of shamatha-vipashyana, you are free from tormenting yourself. On the one hand, since you experience further subtleties, you experience more acute and direct pain. On the other hand, you also experience that acute pain as workable, because you are able to single out individual perceptions one at a time. So when a buddha experiences suffering, he does not dwell on it."

— Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, "The Path of Individual Liberation: The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma, Volume One"