How To Not Meditate
Suitable for those with a regular meditation practice.
What would happen if we stopped striving for results in meditation, and relaxed into our momentary experience instead? Find out in this 4 week course exploring the Just Sitting practice:
“One should realize that one does not meditate to go deeply into oneself and withdraw from the world. Complete mental openness is the essential point.” Dilgo Khyentse Rimpoche.
We can get into the habit of expecting certain ‘rewards’ from meditation: particular mental states, spiritual ‘progress’ or specific behavioural outcomes. And if we don’t get them, the practice can become stale and stuck. We can lose confidence.
“When performing meditation practice one should think of it as just a natural function of everyday living, like eating or breathing, not as a special, formal event to be undertaken with great seriousness and solemnity. One must realize that to meditate is to pass beyond effort, beyond practice, beyond aims and goals, and beyond the dualism of bondage and liberation” Dilgo Khyentse Rimpoche.
On this course we will explore the just sitting practice, where we sit openly without any sort of goal. We learn to drop the unconscious ‘bargaining’ process that can hold us back, and explore the spaciousness of momentary experience for its own sake.
Just sitting can seem to be a slippery customer. Is it meditation, or not? This course will introduce practical ‘tools’ and guidance on how to enter the practice and discover a more authentic experience on the cushion.
Led by Vidyadhara and Maitrivajra
