Guided Body Sweep Meditation

Mindfulness of the body is a fundamental practice in the Buddhist tradition.  Body awareness includes physical sensation as well as hearing, seeing, smelling and tasting.  There’s nothing imaginative about sensation-mindfulness is most important as the process of mental association emerges.  During the body sweep meditation, the attention is persistently focused on whatever sensation emerges on the surface of the body.  Beginning with sensational awareness at the rim of the nostrils, in this guided meditation, Peter repeatedly suggests progressive awareness of sensation, moving over the facial area, then the scalp, the neck and so on, ending with the sensations noticeable in the feet.  Finally, the meditator is invited to sit with open awareness for whatever sensations appear in the body.  The value of this practice is that, when practiced repeatedly, sensations become evident all over the body, subtle tingling or vibrations, and this awareness provides a stable and ever-present foundational focus, from which the meditator can note the emergence of thoughts and emotions through vipassana practices.

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What Was I Thinking? Peter’s 3 Month Retreat

This is the last dhamma dialogue that Peter will deliver before his 3 month retreat at the Forest Refuge in Massachusetts begins on September 1.  The talk reviews the history and significant teachers he sat retreats with over the last 30 years, and Peter speculates about the approach he will take during the retreat: several weeks of intensive concentration practices, then vipassana practice, including the attempt to integrate insights gained from vipassana to the practice of lojong, the Tibetan training points.  With no concrete goal in mind, Peter wants to be more present in relationships at the end of the retreat.  During his absence, more senior students will provide the dhamma dialogues until he returns during the first week of December.

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