Monday, February 5, 2007

Calm in daily life

Victoria Austin at Insight Meditation Center, August 19, 2001 • Download from Insight Meditation Center's Audio Dharma page (donate)
• practicing with shamata outside of a monastic setting • the conditions for shamata, starting with nourishment • "intentions are like puppies, they need to be frequently fed and cared for" • "even if you can only fulfill your intention for five minutes, that nourishes the intention" • "for every year of practice, I had gained three minutes of equanimity with my mother" • practicing with shamata in meetings

2 comments:

Shugetsu said...

Your summaries of these talks, like the little previews in the chapter headings of Victorian novels, are lovely. The gist of the gist.

Just thought of this cheesy koan joke:
Does a visit to a page without a site-visit-meter actually happen?

Keep posting :-)

Chris van Loben Sels said...

Very funny . . . there's some sort of extension to the joke about comments . . . ok, also very cheesy: Does a blog without comments have a Buddha nature? (so much for ever being perceived as a serious student now!)

I like the Victorian chapter heading image a lot ("in which we discover that the hero has nodded off during zazen").

Of course, I just totally violated that goal by posting a virtual transcript of Paul Haller's talk. It's tricky though, such a great talk, it's hard to grab just one thread without getting the whole sweater . . .

Thanks for your comment . . . cheers --

--Chris.