The Gradual PathĀ Blog
In the first foundation of mindfulness the benefit or the hallmark is achievement of stability and vividness or pliancy. In the second, you have response flexibility. In the third, you have meta cognitive awareness and in the fourth, you have what we're calling meta cognitive insight. You can...
I think it actually requires much more maturity to be able to stay in the hot pocket of understanding the virtue of this institution and how the lama arrangement works and the qualities of seeking a master that's truly qualified and also recognizing all the malarkey and all the nuance and...
The following is a lightly edited transcript from Master Your Becoming.
Sensation is depicted as a dude with an arrow in his eye.
From our mindfulness 'Awareness' workshop, in the second foundation, sensation, there are three types of sensation: pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. The unpleasant,...
Usually when there's shame, there's also a shadow, rage or anger. Sometimes we're more aware of the anger and less aware of the shame because the shame is more core and more painful. If you have lots of rage, if at the exterior of the onion there's lots of rage, it's designed to protect the core...
Miles sits down with Steve James of Guru Viking to recount how an affluent but disturbed childhood with alcoholic parents and a narcissistic father drove him to self harm and dissatisfaction, and how he found solace and healing in religious practice and a series of influential...
We all agreed in the workshop that we are living in a time where there is tremendous polarization and a tremendous upsurge of negative emotion.
People's hostilities are on a scale unprecedented. I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook, but all you have to say is one word and people are ready to...
The cosmos and the psyche mirror each other, as above, so below, thus humankind has long looked to the stars for greater meaning and clearer direction on our collective journey of awakening.
2020 saw the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that spelled the dissolution of old structures,...
My dear friends,
As the new year dawns I offer my reflections on this year we will never forget.
Despite challenges unseen in a hundred years we remained steadfast together on the gradual path and never faltered a single step. We made no excuses. Wasted no time. We forged ahead in the face...
I'm calling this 'Juice Press'. You haven't heard me say this yet but this is where it fits...
Take an orange in the juice press. You lay it up in the capsule. You lay a theme up on the 'squeezer'. Your theme will be the preciousness of human life.
How many of you are musically inclined? You have...
Think about the worldly refuges first. The worldly things that we take as our refuge, as our sources of comfort, our sources of guidance.
The iPhone... food... the doctor... Netflix... friends and family... fishing... leisure activities...
How well a source are they for the ultimate or...
One of Tsongkhapa's big critiques is that you cannot arrive at enlightenment without a good start. Don't throw out your conceptual knowledge. Don't throw out your ability to reason your way to enlightenment.
Go back for a second to the image of meditation in our culture. What does it look like?...
