The hindrances are part of the inner landscape on the journey to wholeness and awakening. When we recognize them with mindfulness, they don't need to be a problem.
Our breath can be a home base that allows us to meet life with a relaxed, wakeful presence. This meditation helps us calm and settle the mind with long deep breathing, and then establishes a mindful presence with our natural breathing. When distracted, we learn to relax back again and again, learning the pathway of homecoming to the aliveness, openness and mystery that is always Here.
While fear is a natural and intelligent emotion, when fear goes on overdrive, we are in a trance of fear that contracts our body, heart and mind. Our resistance to the direct experience of fear sustains the trance and leads to decisions and behaviors that harm ourselves and others. Only by facing fear with mindfulness and compassion can we awaken from trance and reconnect with our capacity for creativity and full aliveness, wisdom and love.
Unification of Body, mind, and Heart. The functions of Samadhi. The Buddha's 4 guidelines on mindfulness of the breath: The long breath, the short breath, experiencing the whole body, and calming the body as you breathe in and out.
The primary qualities of a healing and freeing presence are being alert, open and tender. This meditation arouses these qualities by engaging a mindful awareness of the breath, and then a relaxed, gentle attentiveness to the changing experience of the moment. It ends by bringing lovingkindness to ourselves and all beings.
