Meditation course for beginners
Schedule
Thu, 28 Sep, 2023 at 08:00 pm
Location
Kathmandu | Kathmandu, BA
Learn to meditate with the tools of Practical BuddhismWe often use spirituality as a new way of escaping from our life, from our everyday problems. We want to get away from our stressful jobs, from our screaming children, from our complicated relationships, and we are hoping that spirituality will drive away our attention from these wordly concerns.
After we learn meditation and get to know the teachings of Buddhism, we immediately feel an ease from our everyday suffering, so we think it might be something good. We start to be interested in it and we want to copy the life of those peaceful, happy monks who joyfully live in the Himalayas without any problems. Since we want to copy their life, we try to use these new rules of spirituality on ourselves. We often fall into the trap of ego and use spirituality as a new way of controlling ourselves, following new rules, forcing ourselves into a new system, closing ourselves into a new prison, decorating it with colourful prayer flags, cinnamon scented inscenses and shiney Buddha statues, while we stay the same ignorant in our minds.
The method of Practical Buddhism uses a different approach. According to Nagarjuna, the Buddha didn’t say that you need to abandon samsara in order to gain enlightenment. So there is absolutely no need of abandoning this life's problems. We don't need to go to months long retreats into monasteries to meditate in peace, we don't need to give up our jobs and our love life, we don't need to stop having sex or drinking a beer with our collagues. We can use everyday life situations to meet with Dharma, to get to know and understand our own minds, to understand the concept of ego and the working of it, and to learn how to change it. By using the meditation techniques of Practical Buddhism, we directly relate to everyday life situations and problems through our meditation practice, and learn to work with situations, and at the same time work with our own mind.
The purpose of meditation is not to get away from our everyday life problems and find a moment to relax, but to use everyday problems to understand and transform our own mind. We don't need to give up anything from our lives to find liberation, we just need to learn how to let go everything what we are not, and gain the ability to meet with who we truly are, and be able to lead our lives in harmony with that. The method of Practical Buddhism doesn't exist by strict rules, and doesn't try to force every people to think and relate to things in the same way. It highly respects the individual unique mind of each people, and it helps us to relate to our practice and to our everyday life according to our own unique way. It helps us to get the best out of ourselves by finding out who we truly are, without the image what we have been creating about ourselves according to the expectations of society, the expectations of our parents, friends, lovers and even ourselves.
With the methods of Practical Buddhism there is a possibility to relate to ourselves as we truly are, and find out how would we like to live our lives while being true to our unique selves, learning to enjoy every moment of it, and gaining liberation through our everyday life, not from running away from it.
This course is recommended for total beginners, and also for experienced practitioners of meditation.
The course takes 1,5 hours, including 4x15 minutes of guided meditation practice, learning the basic sitting meditation posture, and basic teachings about the purpose of meditation.
The course is available in person in Katmandu, Nepal (from 04.09-29.09) and online worldwide.
If you are interested trying out and learning meditation please contact me through private message.