Unifying Practice

Five Mondays, March 25 – April 22, 7 – 9pm

This module of What Meditation Really Is, looks in detail at the Unifying Practice, in which three key methods – each of them a complete method of meditation in itself – are brought together into one practice. As with all the other methods of meditation that have been presented in What Meditation Really Is, their purpose is to help the mind rest, undistracted.

The Unifying Practice brings together the three aspects of body, speech and mind, and is a way of bringing our body, speech and mind into the environment of meditation and the state of non-distraction.

– First, using the support of looking at an image of Buddha transforms our outer environment and acts on the level of the body.
– Second, chanting or reciting a mantra is related to the speech and purifies our inner world of sound, emotion and energy.
– Third, watching the breath pacifies the mind. This may gradually lead to the higher meditation of the innermost nature of mind.

As we practice these methods on a gradual sequence, it enables us slowly to transform our thoughts, emotions and energy, and become steadily more peaceful and more present. When we practice them together in what we call “The Unifying Practice”, it brings the three methods together, and “unifies” them, so that we can see their connectedness, and how each one supports the other. This accelerates the process of meditation and deepens the experience, with the result that meditation can happen effortlessly.

This unique course has been specially developed by Sogyal Rinpoche after many years of teaching in the West. Led by experienced meditators combined with crucial teachings by Sogyal Rinpoche on video, students attending the course will have the opportunity to understand that there are many ways to help us transform our mood and emotion so we can enter the state of meditation. They will be introduced to the methods of reciting and chanting a mantra and sitting with an image of the Buddha. Students will practice watching the breath as a single method and as part of the Unifying Practice. Finally, students will understand that we can use the Unifying Practice skilfully and creatively.

Open to students that have completed at least one of the earlier modules of What Meditation Really Is.

Course Fee: $85 for the whole course. Work/study available. “Friends of Rigpa NYC center” discount apply.

Click here to register online