Gelong Thubten: daily mindfulness (video)

Gelong Thubten (gelongthubten.com), Change Your World Conference 2017 via Founder Suzy X (Change Your World); Crystal Quintero, Ashley Wells, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

"Life's a beach." "This is my happy place." Mindfulness is key (changeyourworld.me).

Gelong Thubten explains how to develop a daily mindfulness practice. This was one of the many speakers at the 2017 Change Your World Conference at Eden Court, Scotland. It is a class in non-religious mindfulness meditation.

During this session Ven. Thubten explains how to develop a daily mindfulness practice and how to integrate it into daily life, at work and at home. He explains two or three simple techniques then follows up with a short guided meditation or visualization.

The emphasis here is on gentleness and compassion for oneself and others. There is good advice on how to deal with thoughts and emotions that will definitely arise a lot of the time.

Mindfulness (sati) was taught by the Buddha to realize enlightenment directly by developing insight (wisdom) into the true nature of things. But Ven. Thubten instead emphasizes how it helps reduce stress, increase mental clarity and focus, and balances emotions, which improves relationships with others.

This is non-religious after all, so why get bogged down by what the Buddha taught?

Ven. Thubten's book A Monk's Guide to Happiness: Meditation in the 21st Century is available from the author. It is a Mahayana/Vajrayana approach to being in the world rather than gaining release.

Want to access speakers, coaches, health and wellbeing professionals like Ven. Thubten? Why not join the online daily coaching group Change Your World Everyday? Change Your World Everyday is an online coaching community for people who want more from life, personally and professionally. It’s for people who are ready to work on themselves, are open to coaching and need support, encouragement, and accountability.  The daily coaching and personal development it provides at Change Your World Everyday can have a game changing impact on all areas of life. Once one starts seeing the results of personal development, it becomes addicting. One starts falling in love with the person s/he is becoming, the places being visited, the things being done, and it motivates one to work even harder. Hope to join a wonderful community? They look forward to receiving money and supporting all to create the life they truly want to live.

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Tibetan teaching: "Enlightenment is..."

The Freedom of Buddhahood

Anam Thubten Rimpoche, Dharmata Foundation

Buddha-hood is the discovery of freedom. This is not freedom from the outside but freedom from within. It is freedom from our own mind distorting reality. As long as we are looking for freedom from outside we are doing the wrong thing and the fundamental suffering of hope and fear will perpetuate.

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Real freedom is freedom from our own conceptions, from the psychological veil that is distorting the way things are. When we are free from our own unenlightened mind, that internal veil, we see that even our problems are divine. Everything is a manifestation of great emptiness. That means that everything is divine. We have to love everything including the dark side of the world. We have to love whatever life presents to us. Are we ready to let go of all of our resistance and see all of life as divine, as a manifestation of Supreme Source? This is a practical discipline.

When we are encountering difficulties in life can we simply learn how to love what is? When things are falling apart, when we are having bad hair days, when life is mistreating us, can we find a way to love it? Some day we are all going to die. We may die alone or we may die surrounded by friends. No one knows how or when they will die. But we all have to find a way to love that we are dying.

What is happening to us right now? Are we dis-liking reality? We have a simple goal – to love all of reality. We have to love everything. We are always relating to reality based on preconceived notions rather than the way things are. Things are perfectly perfect the way they are. Confidence is knowing that everything is perfect. We all have moments of being completely melted, moments when we surrender our ego completely. There is the possibility of being in that place every moment. This requires work, the work of reflection and meditation practice.

Our greatest karmic tendency is that we feel we need to have control of everything. We need to control our reality. What is the opposite of this? It is to wait and do nothing.

Sometimes we feel that we are dancing in an ocean of ecstasy. But sometimes we lose our awareness and we get lost in confusion. We merely have to wait. We don't know how to wait. We have to do something. All of our habits of tension well up. We want to declare a national emergency in our own world.

All human beings hate waiting. I remember being in India and waiting in line for train tickets. People were pushing and shoving because they couldn't stand waiting. We have tremendous aversion to waiting. Ego is afraid of not knowing. Our idea of certainty is based on ego. Our mind has to be preoccupied by notions that there is security and certainty in every moment. Ego needs to hear, "Everything is secure." Ego is terrified of uncertainty. Ego can't accept reality.

It takes many years of meditation to realize that we have no conflict with reality. This absence of conflict, this acceptance of all conditions and events as a perfect display of Supreme Source is very simple and portable knowledge. We have never had a conflict with reality.

Whenever you feel conflict remember, "This is not my problem. I have no problem with reality. This is ego's problem." Ego is always insecure and falling apart. Reality is mighty. It rules the whole of existence. When you are able to surrender to reality, you will experience a great awakening. The act of surrendering to reality is enlightenment. It happens suddenly, spontaneously, at a very unexpected moment.... Read more

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