How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind

by Pema Chödrön

Overview

“When something is bothering you—a person is bugging you, a situation is irritating you, or physical pain is troubling you—you must work with your mind, and that is done through meditation. Working with our mind is the only means through which we’ll actually begin to feel happy and contented with the world that we live in.” —Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön is treasured around the world for her unique ability to transmit teachings and practices that bring peace, understanding, and compassion into our lives. With How to Meditate, the American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun presents her first book exploring in depth what she considers the essentials for a lifelong practice.

More and more people are beginning to recognize a profound inner longing for authenticity, connection, and aliveness. Meditation, Pema explains, gives us a golden key to address this yearning. This step-by-step guide shows readers how to honestly meet and openly relate with the mind, embrace the fullness of our experience, and live in a wholehearted way as we discover:

• The basics of meditation, from getting settled and the six points of posture to working with your breath and cultivating an attitude of unconditional friendliness
• The Seven Delights—how moments of difficulty can become doorways to awakening and love
• Shamatha (or calm abiding), the art of stabilizing the mind to remain present with whatever arises
• Thoughts and emotions as “sheer delight”—instead of obstacles—in meditation

“I think ultimately why we practice is so that we can become completely loving people, and this is what the world needs,” writes Pema Chödrön. How to Meditate is an essential book from this wise teacher to assist each one of us in this virtuous goal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781622030750
Publisher:	Sounds True, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2013
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	184
Sales rank:	258,871
File size:	20 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Pema Chödrön is a well-known and beloved American-born Buddhist nun and author of many spiritual classics. She serves as the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey Monastery in Nova Scotia and is a student of Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche and the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. For more information, including a list of her published works, visit pemachodronfoundation.org.

Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936, in New York City. She attended Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She taught as an elementary school teacher for many years in both New Mexico and California. Pema has two children and three grandchildren.

While in her mid-thirties, Pema traveled to the French Alps and encountered Lama Chime Rinpoche, with whom she studied for several years. She became a novice nun in 1974 while studying with Lama Chime in London. His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa came to England at that time, and Pema received her ordination from him.

Pema first met her root teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972. Lama Chime encouraged her to work with Rinpoche, and it was with him that she ultimately made her most profound connection, studying with him from 1974 until his death in 1987. At the request of the Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full monastic ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong.

Pema served as the director of Karma Dzong, in Boulder, until moving in 1984 to rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be the director of Gampo Abbey. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche asked her to work towards the establishment of a monastery for western monks and nuns.

Pema currently teaches in the United States and Canada and plans for an increased amount of time in solitary retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.

Pema is interested in helping establish the monastic tradition in the West, as well in continuing her work with Buddhists of all traditions, sharing ideas and teachings. She has written several books: The Wisdom of No Escape, Start Where You Are, When Things Fall Apart, The Places that Scare You, No Time to Lose, Practicing Peace in Times of War, and most recently, Smile at Fear.

For more information, visit pemachodronfoundation.org.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction: Choosing to Live Wholeheartedly 1

Part 1 The Technique of Meditation

1 Preparing for Practice and Making the Commitment 17

2 Stabilizing the Mind 23

3 The Six Points of Posture 29

4 Breath: The Practice of Letting Go 37

5 Attitude: Keep Coming Back 41

6 Unconditional Friendliness 47

7 You Are Your Own Meditation Instructor 53

Part 2 Working with Thoughts

8 The Monkey Mind 61

9 The Three Levels of Discursive Thought 63

10 Thoughts as the Object of Meditation 69

11 Regard All Dharmas as Dreams 73

Part 3 Working with Emotions

12 Becoming Intimate with Our Emotions 79

13 The Space within the Emotion 85

14 Emotions as the Object of Meditation 87

15 Getting Our Hands Dirty 93

16 Hold the Experience 99

17 Breathing with the Emotion 103

18 Drop the Story and Find the Feeling 107

Part 4 Working With Sense Perceptions

19 The Sense Perceptions 115

20 The Interconnection of All Perceptions 133

Part 5 Opening Your Heart to Include Everything

21 Giving Up the Struggle 139

22 The Seven Delights 145

23 The Bearable Lightness of Being 153

24 Beliefs 157

25 Relaxing with Groundlessness 161

26 Create a Circle of Practitioners 165

27 Cultivate a Sense of Wonder 167

28 The Way of the Bodhisattva 171

Editorial Reviews

Chödrön's voice is gently humorous, always kind, and seemingly infinitely wise.” —The Los Angeles Times

“Meditation doesn't remove pain, or alleviate the negative energy flowing through the world. This is the information which beloved teacher Chodrön offers readers at the beginning of this new book. Meditation will, however, relieve suffering, not by changing our outer environment but by turning our attention inward to make peace with ourselves. The aim is not to transcend our feelings of pain and distress. Instead, it is to open our hearts and minds to accept what we are feeling in any given moment even if that feeling is difficult. The gifts that Chodrön's meditation has to offer are steadfastness, clear awareness, courage, attention to the moment, and learning to not make too big a deal of things. The hallmarks of her teaching are gentle encouragement and loving acceptance. While she provides guidelines for getting started and exercises to keep us going, her greatest teaching is the lesson she shows us on every page: to show compassion for ourselves as we struggle with life's challenges and to base our success on the journey not the goal.” —Anna Jedrziewski, Retailing Insight Magazine

“With her gentle approach and clear treatment of difficult concepts, Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön (When Things Fall Apart) is a wonderful leader for those who want to begin or deepen a mindfulness meditation practice (shamatha). . . She presents it all with an appropriate humility, sharing her own struggles as an ongoing student, her insights as a sought-after teacher, and a belief that readers should ultimately become their own teachers. Indeed, by embracing the wisdom and practicing the exercises in this book, readers will be well on their way.” —Vanessa Finney, San Francisco Book Review, May 2013

“Pema is one of our most beloved and helpful teachers-practical, compassionate, and wise. How to Meditate is a great way to take her teachings to heart and develop a meditation practice.” —Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and A Lamp in the Darkness

“This new book by Ani Pema is a great compilation of meditation instruction which she has personally given to many of her students over the years. These instructions have brought so much help to others that it has made her one of the most beloved and revered Buddhist teachers in this modern world. With a brilliant mind and an absolutely cheerful attitude toward life, she practices what she teaches. She is a great support and friend to thousands of readers, and I am very sure that this book will help many in their everyday lives, as she makes this genuine attempt to reach us all.” —Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche

From the Publisher