Every practice has two components:
1. Training how to experience life free from reactivity and confusion
2. Living life in such way that supports this training and gives expression to it.
1. Meditation Practice — Training how to experience life free from reactivity and confusion
This training is usually done through meditation practice, regular sessions of focused attention unmixed with other activities.
The first group of guided meditations presents a series of practices that train clear stable attention. These meditations, by themselves, greatly reduce reactivity in most people.
The second group presents a series of practices whose aim is to eliminate confusion about what mind is, what experience is, what life is, what you are.
When these two abilities are joined together, you are practicing mahamudra.
As in any training, a meditation session has three parts:
Opening
In the Tibetan tradition, the opening also has three parts:
Connecting with the lineage through which these teachings come
Refuge, or what you are aiming to do through this training, that is, through understanding the nature of mind, free yourself from the tyranny of reactivity and the dungeon of confusion about what we are and what life is.
Awakening Mind, or what we undertake this journey, that is, you so value this possibility that you not only want to come to your own understanding and freedom, but you also want to help all beings do so, too.
Main training
Click here to view a list of Calm Abiding meditations to use for this portion of a session.
Click here to view a list of Insight meditations to use for this portion of a session.
The main training is whichever of the guided meditations you have chosen to do.
Closing
Again, there are three parts:
Dedication, in which you dedicate the goodness, the understandings, and the benefits of your practice to the welfare of all beings.
Aspirations, in which you form and make wishes for your spiritual growth and maturity. For this, you might consider reading aloud the full Aspirations for Mahamudra that you will find here.
Good fortune, in which you radiate the energy of your practice, filling the whole world with the goodness you have generated.
Then you go about your day, living this practice to the best of your ability.
2. A way of living — A way of living that supports this training and gives expression to it in your life.
Where training builds skills and abilities, how we live our lives is the actual measure of what our training has led us to understand and do.
How we walk, how we talk, how we relate to others, indeed, every aspect of life is an opportunity to put training into practice.