The Gradual Path Blog
Steps 1-6 are called the Ordinary Preliminaries and have to do with our meditation practice.
Prepare your body for meditation with a dignified and comfortable posture.
Prepare your mind for meditation with one of three kinds of motivation depending on your predisposition and capacity.
1)...
The altar is our workbench.
What’s on the altar is that which we aspire to become.
The purpose of offering is to exercise or cultivate good qualities that will hasten maturation or manifestation.
With a pure heart offer anything - pure water, fresh fruit, flowers, lit candles, sweet...
Create a sacred space to do the work.
What is the relationship between the environment and our state of mind?
Do we prioritize our psychological growth enough to designate an actual workspace for it?
What design elements would go into a space to make it inviting for you?
What about Mother...
Awakening in 30 Steps is a series of contemplations on each of the lam rim steps from Dr. Miles Neale's book Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human.
The lam rim is not a linear sprint to a final destination, it’s a spiral-like process of gradual awakening.
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Sitting cross-legged in an upright meditation posture facing an altar, I take refuge in the Three Jewels in Pali and then Tibetan. My voice is overshadowed by an unfamiliar sound on a loudspeaker – the call to prayer beckoning the Islamic devotees to the mosque. A reminder that I am no...
Dr. Miles Neale recently talked to Tom Parkes of the Mentally Flexible podcast. In this episode they discuss:
- The Contemplative Studies Program
- How Miles’s childhood informed his spiritual life
- The importance of presence in helping another person feel...
Sound healer and Integrated Vibrational therapist Phil Jacobs of Toronto Sound Therapy is a regular guest of the Contemplative Studies Program. Phil has brought soothing sounds and vibration to Miles' guided visualizations to powerful effect on a number of occasions. Phil rejoins...
Join us for this free event April 21 at 7pm EDT when Geshe Tenzin Zopa (Unmistaken Child) shows us how to meditate on the themes from the 1000 year old Tibetan Buddhist tradition of lam rim or gradual path of spiritual awakening.
Register here.
There are what are called the four parts of karma. We think of karma as one thing but karma is actually many things. Not only is karma cause but karma is also the effect. They come together. They are interdependent. You can't have a cause without an effect.
The root verb for karma in Sanskrit...
I think it actually requires much more maturity to be able to stay in the hot pocket of understanding the virtue of this institution and how the lama arrangement works and the qualities of seeking a master that's truly qualified and also recognizing all the malarkey and all the nuance and...
I'm calling this 'Juice Press'. You haven't heard me say this yet but this is where it fits...
Take an orange in the juice press. You lay it up in the capsule. You lay a theme up on the 'squeezer'. Your theme will be the preciousness of human life.
How many of you are musically inclined? You have...
Think about the worldly refuges first. The worldly things that we take as our refuge, as our sources of comfort, our sources of guidance.
The iPhone... food... the doctor... Netflix... friends and family... fishing... leisure activities...
How well a source are they for the ultimate or...
