We will learn and practice a series of meditations developed by a modern day meditation master, Kilung Rinpoche, as presented in his book The Relaxed Mind. These meditations come from a tradition which has been developed over thousands of years and passed from person to person. While refreshingly simple and well suited for busy Westerners, these meditations remain true to the essence of this tradition. These meditations create a solid foundation for ongoing meditation practice and for connecting to calmness, relaxation, inspiration, and spaciousness of body and mind.
Each class offers meditation instruction, guided meditation, and discussion. There will be readings between classes from The RelaxedMind by Kilung Rinpoche.
This class will cover the seven meditations from The Relaxed Mind.
- Basic Sitting — Joining Body and Mind: Experiencing our physical body as the support and foundation for meditation, we gently join our body with mental awareness.
- Calm Abiding —Using an object of attention to free ourselves from the disturbances of thoughts and to reach a state of calm and stability.
- Refined Basic Sitting — Calm evolves into clarity, relaxation, energy, and inspiration, providing a bridge to the experience of insight.
- Insight Meditation — Seeing beneath the surface to the nature of all phenomena, with clarity and insight we understand things as they really are (vipassana).
- Open Heart-Mind Meditation — This meditation will help you cultivate an attitude of equanimity, welcome any would-be distraction as part of the meditation, and recognize the light of your own awareness as the heart of compassion.
- Pure Mind Meditation — This meditation will help you relax into a deeper sense of harmony with your own mind, transform negative thoughts into spacious compassionate awareness, and experience pure perception—the mind beyond duality,
- Nonconceptual Meditation — This meditation will help you relax your mind into a state of non-doing, transcend dualistic fixation to fully enter the flow of existence, and release expectations around meditation.
Class 1: Mindfulness of body, May 16, 2019.
Please read Introduction and Chapter 1: Basic Sitting Meditation: Laying the Foundation–by Joining Mind and Body.
Audio of guided meditations, Emily Weidman:
- Meditation One: Standing exercise
- Meditation Two: Body Scan (lying on floor)
- Meditation Three: Seated meditation (with breathing)
You may also enjoy some of the talks and guided meditations in Module 3: Deepening our Meditation Practice, from 2014.
Class 2: Basic Sitting, May 23, 2019.
Audio of extended guided meditation, Jim Rosen.
Class 3: Mindfulness of feeling, May 30, 2019.
Audio of guided meditations, Emily Weidman:
- Meditation One: Meditation on feelings in the body and positive and negative emotions.
- Meditation Two: Meditation on sound.
Class 4: Basic meditation, June 6, 2019.
Audio of guided meditations, Michael Fagan:
- Meditation One: Basic meditation instruction with cleansing breaths
- Meditation Two: Awareness of sound and basic sitting
- Group discussion
Class 5: Calm Abiding, June 13, 2019.
Please read Chapter 2: Calm Abiding Meditation.
Audio of extended guided meditation, Jim Rosen.
Class 6: Refined Sitting Meditation, June 20, 2019.
Please read Chapter 3: Refined Basic Sitting Meditation.
Audio of extended guided meditation, Jim Rosen.
Group discussion .
Class 7: Insight Meditation, June 27, 2019.
Please read Chapter 4: Insight Meditation.
Audio of extended guided meditation, Jim Rosen.
Class 8: Review, Sep 12, 2019.
Audio of extended guided meditation, Jim Rosen.
Class 9: Open Heart-Mind Meditation, Sep 19, 2019.
Class 10: Pure Mind Meditation, Sep 26, 2019.
Audio of explanation of Pure Mind Meditation, Jim Rosen.
Audio of discussion.
Class 11: Nonconceptual Meditation, Oct 3, 2019.
Audio of discussion.
About the instructor (Jim Rosen):
Jim Rosen’s teaching is informed by decades of experience in both the technology and the contemplative worlds. As an entrepreneur who co-founded two successful technology firms, he has extensive hands-on experience in building companies. Having practiced, studied, and taught meditation for decades, he has learned how rich this nexus of work and meditation is.