Tag: recovery

Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

Amtabha mantra

By Vimalasara on Fri, 6 Dec, 2013 - 06:05
Day 20 is the Amitabha mantra. Amitabha is a deep red archetypal Buddha. He is particularly associated with love and loving kindness, and with meditation. When we chant the Amitabha mantra you could imagine feeling connected to a great red sun of love and stillness; to the heartbeat of loving kindness. You could visualize or feel rays of ruby light streaming towards you and filling you with love, easing your suffering and stilling your heart and mind. The mantra is...
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

Mindfulness of breathing meditation

By Vimalasara on Thu, 5 Dec, 2013 - 05:25
Day 19 is a meditation on the breath, seeing the nature of thoughts. In the meditation we label our thoughts to help us disentangle from them and see their nature more clearly. When we catch ourselves caught up in our thoughts we can label it as thinking. This can help us let go of whatever it is we are caught up in. Have a day mind full of breath. The music has been composed by The Alaska None.
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

Green Tara

By Vimalasara on Wed, 4 Dec, 2013 - 06:20
Day 18 is the Green Tara mantra. Like Avalokitesvara, Tara is especially associated with compassion – the quintessence of compassion. Remember she was born from his tears. When we chant the Tara mantra we can feel that we are contacting deep compassion. This compassion may be expressed in tears, in the feeling of your heart opening up, in the painful or pleasureable tone of your thoughts. You may feel that you are feeling nothing at all - this is okay...
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

May you be peaceful

By Vimalasara on Tue, 3 Dec, 2013 - 05:20
Day 17 is a song meditation on loving kindness, using phrases that are often used in loving kindness meditation. Loving kindness has a strong element of liking. Sometimes we can love people but don’t actually like them. This sometimes happens in our families. We love our parents or siblings but realize we don’t actually like them.. But to like someone, is to take love deeper. That is loving kindness. To like is to open up and accept ourselves and others...
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

Ocean breath

By Vimalasara on Mon, 2 Dec, 2013 - 04:26
Day 16 is a meditation on breathing, in which we can think of the breath as a Higher Power. When we connect to the breath our lives can change without us trying to change it. Although the Buddhist tradition has no place for God as a creator divinity as understood by the theistic traditions, there is nevertheless a clear and definite understanding of a supra-personal dimension, an “Other Power” in Buddhism. The breath can act as the groundwork for connecting...
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

A message from my co-author Paramabandu (week one meditations)

By Vimalasara on Mon, 2 Dec, 2013 - 04:18
Hello we’ve been excited by our 21 day meditation for recovery and busy lives. Apologies to those of you who joined our community this week and have not been able to find the first week of meditations. We have just posted them for you now. These meditations are our trailer for our book, Eight Step Recovery - Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction. We wanted to produce a selection of meditations and reflections that are bite size in length,...
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

Padmasambhava mantra

By Vimalasara on Sun, 1 Dec, 2013 - 07:25
Welcome to those of you who have joined our community recently. And welcome back to some of you who have been busy doing other things. Day 15 is the Padmasambhava mantra. Padmasambhava is associated with taking Buddhism to Tibet and transforming demons. When we chant the Padmasambhava mantra we can think of our own demons – the difficult and often painful forces within us – being transformed. We can imagine asking Padmasambhava to help us with our struggles, freeing up...
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

Reflecting on our common humanity

By Vimalasara on Sat, 30 Nov, 2013 - 02:53
Day 14 is a loving kindness meditation, reflecting on our common humanity. We can reflect that at heart, each and every one of us wants to be happy and does not want to suffer. Even though sometimes the way we go about this causes us suffering, our basic intention is to be happy. During the meditation we can cultivate loving kindness by reflecting on how we share with the rest of humanity this essential desire to be happy and to...
The SoundCloud content at https://soundcloud.com/thebuddhistcentre/21-days-humanity is not available, or it is set to private.
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

The two darts teaching - working with difficult emotions

By Vimalasara on Fri, 29 Nov, 2013 - 07:01
Day 13 is a meditation to work with pain and difficult emotions. In particular we try to distinguish between the raw experience of pain and our mental reactions to the pain that makes it worse. The good news is: that it is possible to have a reprieve from mental and emotional pain. In the meditation we follow the breath as an anchor for the meditation. Then whenever we notice that we are experiencing bodily pain or difficult emotions, as best...
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction
Eight Step Recovery - Using the Buddha's Teachings To Overcome Addiction

vajrasattva

By Vimalasara on Thu, 28 Nov, 2013 - 05:56
Day 12 is the Vajrasattva mantra. Vajrasattva is an archetypal bodhisattva, the colour of sunlight on snow. He is particularly associated with absolute purity, our innate purity. There is a spontaneous laughter: “ha ha ha”, this laughter is the realization that we have always been pure, the purity has just been covered up with life. When you chant the mantra you can feel your shortcomings and unskilful actions falling away from you, being purified by Vajrasattva, eventually leaving you with...

Pages