Thoughts for the First Retreat Sessions

Thoughts for the first retreat sessions

There is a cultural thing in education i'd like to change, it is an presupposed idea that the student come to be imparted upon information by the teacher.

Now whereas this is part of what education is about, at least at the beginning because the student needs to be given the basic concepts upon which later information rests and upon the coming together of all these concepts function and accomplishments can be achieved.

But to be imparted information upon is not enough, this infromation needs to be digested and worked with from within the context of each individual. And so the indidvidual needs to confront/deal/contemplate/decide their relationship to and with the material that he or she is been given.

For some people this naturally happens and for others this is not.

Neither are good or bad both attitudes have something to be said for and against them.

One thing we do in retreats is the inspection digestion and assimilation of the material we are studying, through contemplation and then concnetration on conclusions we have arrived at.

This is where the real work of the meditator comes in.

It is not always easy in fact sometimes it feels like we are abiding in a grey cloud in which we are not able to do any mental thing, it feels heavy and complicated and we begin to encounter our own short comings such as no real interest in what we are doing we are getting board with this thing that we have been thinking about for the last 10 minutes, we are unable to settle our mind we find other things more interesting etc

this is why I am interested to pose a challenge ourself during this short concnetration retreat.

To give much time for silence and to remaining with our self.

I'd like to give time for people to ask themselves the question about what are their real aspirations

and to show them the different types of aspirations and that those who have a certain type of aspirations are unique individuals in our society.

May need to talk about how this uniqueness can feel a bit awckward because it suddenly seem as if we are different maybe even more special or better than others.

We are certainly not better than others, we are different because we have different aspirations and in that sense we are special, because it takes a great deal of good fortune to have such different aspirations.

Flow of 1st session

Guru founder

Liberating prayer

20min meditation-[it is not enough time but this is what we have... we are just building up causes and conditions for the future. By doing all this now, we are creating the causes for a future where we shall be able to do longer and more qualified meditations.]

settle body through brief scanning and relaxing of the body using our mind

settle mind through bringing our awarness to the present moment

watching the mind for a long period

choosing one meditation as prelimnary

there are few options:

1. simple sensation of breath

2. black and white

3. counting the breath

after few sessions keep only one of them and it becomes your pacifying meditation

be clear about the object you are focusing on

remebering that the final aim of each of these meditations is to make our mind feel peaceful,

once some experience of peace has arisen learn to sustain it and enjoy it

[should we meditate on the presence of Buddha?]

prayers for meditation

short talk about a particular element of our meditation

Aspirations.

Read from UTM p.142-143 to demonstrate the benefits of concentration in order to inspire us to attain it

another meditation

watching the mind

developing the aspiration to attain concentration- to be mentally single pointed on one object- the mind

pacifying our mind

from a peaceful state we are lead to meditating on the mind itself.

Thoughts for Session 2

the previous session went well, although it did take 1h 20min.....

this was due to having