Every morning when I check my email I begin my day with reading an inspirational message called Rigpa Glimpse of the Day. (You can sign-up for free here.) A few days ago (to be exact on July 22) the message was about how we can inspire ourselves to enter into meditation. It quoted an excerpt from the section on Inspiration in chapter 5 of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche:

The teachings on the posture in meditation not only give instructions about our physical posture, but also include advice on our inner posture. There is a reason for this. In meditation, openness of both our body and mind and heart are very important.

I have found it very helpful for my practice to reflect on what is really meant by “inner posture”. In the teachings, this aspect of the posture is often described as the posture of our mind. Why? Because it is about our attitude. It is about how we look at ourselves, both our true nature and our relative condition. Another way of explaining the inner posture is that it is the feeling and atmosphere with which we practice.

I enjoy studying teachings on meditation. It helps me keep my practice alive and reminds me of the different instructions. When I don’t have time to study longer teachings, I find reading short quotes is a great support for my practice. They are like pithy instructions that remind me of the most crucial points.

Quotes are really wonderful and can be used in so many ways. For example, when I want to work on a specific aspect of my practice, I sometimes pick a quote that expresses the essence of what I want to focus on. I then write it onto a post-it-note and put it on my practice table as a reminder.

Here is a collection of my 25 favorite quotes. Maybe you’ll find some amongst them that inspire you too. I also invite you to share your favorite quotes and how you work with them in the comments.

The spiritual teachings tell us that meditation can help us find true happiness. It is a small hobby of mine to collect quotes and post them on my twitter account!  So here are my favorite quotes on happiness:

When was the last time you gave your mind a good hug? My mind loves being hugged and I love hugging my mind! Unfortunately I often forget to do it. Too many distractions!

The good news is that it is actually very easy and doesn’t take a lot of time. Here is how one of my teachers Tsoknyi Rinpocheexplains how to find and hug your mind. Warning: you might fall in love with your mind and get addicted to hugging it! ... but I think, if that were to happen, that would not be such a bad thing!

Reading Ian’s inspiring post on Mingyur Rinpoche's explanation of the  “The Real Essence of Meditation” reminded me of teachings that Mingyur Rinpoche gave in his public talk in Lerab Ling, 11 September 2010 on “Calming the Mind: The Practice of Awareness Meditation”.

In this teaching Mingyur Rinpoche explained the essence of meditation in a way that is very similar to the one that Ian shared with us. I very vividly remember how he made sounds with a meditation gong to demonstrate how we can understand what awareness is. It left a deep impact on me and really helped me understand better what meditation is about. The reason I mention this is because the event was streamed live world wide, the video is also available for your enjoyment on the video streaming archive page of the Rigpa website!  Don’t miss it!

At first glance, this might sound like a strange question, but actually there are meditation instructions that use these examples!

I recently listened to a collection of teachings called “What Meditation Really Is” by Sogyal Rinpoche. In this 3 disc DVD set Sogyal Rinpoche talks about the lion’s and dog’s approaches in meditation. When I heard this, I thought it would be nice to share this story here.

In my last post I wrote about how we can find a common ground between the many different approaches to meditation. Today I want to share a list of questions that might be useful to ask ourselves to clarify our practice, regardless of what kind of meditation we may be practicing.

There are so many different approaches and methods of meditation, you might wonder if there is a common ground.

Along with a few friends, I’ve been leading a weekly meditation open to anyone in our local community in Puna, Hawai’i.  The people who join us have been exposed to a huge range of meditation approaches.

I was recently asked to lead a Question and Answer Session for the group.  As I prepared a few introductory words, I began to reflect on what might be the common ground among all meditation practitioners.