Earlier today I completed my meditation retreat along with ~40 other students from all around the world. Each day for the first seven days we would awake at 5:45 am, wash up and then gather for morning tea. We would then begin our first hour long meditation (which were actually two 30 min meditations with a short break in between).
After morning meditation we would have breakfast, then have a break, followed by two hours of teachings by our instructor, Ani Karin. There was no talking allowed by the students throughout the morning until after lunch each day (except to ask questions at the end of the lectures).
The afternoon began with group discussions to talk about the morning teachings. After a break we had another 90 minutes of teachings, followed by afternoon tea. The evening began with a 45 minute meditation session, then dinner and then a Q&A session followed by a 15 minute chanting meditation. Then it was lights out until the next morning.
After seven days of following this schedule we then had two full days of silence with seven meditation sessions each day (avg. of 45 mins per session). Before a couple of the sessions we do 15 minutes of walking meditation in the gardens if the weather permits. It was quite surreal to observe a dozen people all walking around very slowly and methodically like they were in a trance. I felt like I was in a dream although it was a bit funny as well. That night we had a light ceremony for our last evening meditation.
The final day we had one last morning meditation followed by our last teaching and then I departed back to Kathmandu after lunch.
The purpose of the retreat was to learn about Tibetan philosophy and world views as well as to learn or expand one's meditation skills. For me, it was also my final preparation before beginning my volunteer service. It certainly has been a very worthwhile experience. It's impossible to summarize everything we learned during the past week, but I've outlined a few key points:
Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion. It encourages you to test out the teachings and determine which ones have truth and value in your own life. For example, you may find the teachings on how to treat all living things with loving kindness and compassion resonate with you while not believing in reincarnation.
Buddhism believes that all sentient beings experience suffering. The cause of our suffering is mostly due to internal causes. These causes stem from either our strong attachment or aversion to outside objects (people, places or things. e.g. we get hurt because we like someone and they don't like us back, or we get jealous of someone who has something we can't afford, or we get angry when someone bumps into us or doesn't treat us nicely, etc.).
The primary focus of Buddhist meditation is to develop one's own mind, so they are better able to treat all living things with loving kindness, compassion and wisdom (and ultimately become fully enlightened). For example, rather then becoming angry when someone bumps into us, we understand that the person is hurting in some way and that pain or suffering is the cause for why they were either distracted or intentionally bumped into us. We thus choose to feel compassion rather than anger towards that person. Needless to say, this takes practice!
Most of us have some level of compassion toward others. Small compassion is when we feel compassion toward family or friends. Large compassion is when we expand our compassion toward our community. Great compassion is when we are compassionate toward all living things, including the planet we live on.
I'll end by including some helpful quotes by the 14th Dalai Lama and other great Buddhist teachers:
The True Meaning of Life:
We are visitors on this planet. We are here for 90-100 years at the very most. During that period, we must try to do something good, something useful with our lives. If you contribute to other people's happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.
Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents, and then later in our life when we are oppressed by sickness and become old, we are again dependent on the kindness of others. Since at the beginning and ending of our lives we are so dependent on others kindness, how can it be in the middle we neglect kindness toward others.
See a few other quotes in the images below.
-Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Location:Kathmandu,Nepal
I think I like this 14th Dalai Lama
ReplyDelete