In this guided meditation, Shaila Catherine highlights the powerful role that concentration plays as we cultivate the awakening factors. The instructions slowly walk through the sequence of Awakening Factors demonstrating how they create the conditions for the next factor in the sequence, and then explores various qualities of the collected mind and choices the meditator may make to further develop the mind once samadhi has been established.
This is a long guided meditation in which Shaila Catherine offers systematic instruction for cultivating loving kindness (metta) and compassion (karuna) through the use of intention filled phrases directed toward beings in various categories.
This guided practice awakens all the senses with an embodied presence, allowing an opening to the moment-to-moment changing flow of experience. We then relax back, resting as the changeless open awareness that is conscious of the flow, and includes all life.
The Buddha talked about tranquility and insight as, two primary developments in meditation practice. The two might have slightly different styles of practice, but each benefits the other.
We will explore ways to engage with the precepts-as prescriptive prohibition; as compassionate inquiry; and as a description of Buddha's mind.
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