Practicing serenity in the Chinese tradition

• Reviewing practicing serenity and insight while hearing
• Analogies and description for different sense objects such as visual forms, doors, flavours, tactile sensations and mental phenomena
• Obstacles in meditation practice and how to counteract them
• Strange sensations or perceptions
• Afflictions, aggregates, death and spiritual demon

87 Practicing Serenity in the Chinese Tradition (download)

Contemplation points

1. Take some time to think about what you do, how you relate to people, how you move through space on an average day, and what kind of influence would that have on the people around you. Imagine that you have good comportment, motivated by kindness and the awareness that what you say and do influences others… What would that be like? Really spend some time with this and allow this awareness to inspire you to develop bodhicitta.
2. Consider some habitual responses you have (it could be to words, people, or situations). What is your initial response? How might you be co-creating the situation by responding in a particular way? Bring to mind the teachings in this session on the emptiness of inherent existence of the words, people, or situation. How might thinking in this way allow you to respond differently and thus change the experience?
3. List the sequence of points to practice serenity when walking. Then walk slowly while practicing these. After ten minutes, pause and notice the effect this has had on your mind. Remember these points and practice them in your daily life.
4. List the sequence of points to practice insight when hearing. Sitting in meditation, observe the sounds you hear and practice these points. Remember these points and practice them in your daily life.
5. How are we encouraged to work with obstacles in our meditation such as strange sensations or perceptions, spirit interferences, arrogance and wrong views, moodiness, attachment to appearances, etc?
6. What are the four maras (or four corrupting forces) to our spiritual practice? What are ways in which these manifest in our daily life? What are some methods from the teaching that we can use to dispel these forces?