By Rob Nairn So, we’ll start by settling the mind. We’ll do the same as we did yesterday evening. At the start of the session, as soon as you begin your meditation, form an intention. The intention is to remain with the breath. Just very simple! It’s not a big deal. You just intend “I [...]

By Rob Nairn WHY IS THE MIND UNSETTLED? First we need to ask why it is necessary to settle the mind, and what is the unsettled mind. Mostly, it is the mind we have always lived with, the one that can’t remain on the cushion. It can’t remain in this room or anywhere near this [...]

By Rob Nairn If in daily life we embark upon an enterprise, we usually prepare for it. Death is no different. The reason should be apparent by now: the mind that experiences dying is a continuation of the mind that is reading these words. Unless we have the aid of an accomplished lama, no external [...]

By Rob Nairn THE MANIFESTATION OF IGNORANCE We have been observing the mind and seeing how intention is overridden; how we form an intention to focus on the meditation support and how another force then overrides it. We do the exercise so that we truly understand that there are different forces operating in our minds [...]

By Rob Nairn So far we have covered a few basic areas such as why we meditate, what meditation is, and the motivation for meditating. In the first chapter we looked at the method and the effect of meditating and I focused quite a bit on the importance of being clear about the attitude we [...]

By Rob Nairn “I have never experienced death. I know nothing about dying. Now my mother is ill and dying and I have no idea what to do.” I think this is how most of us would feel. We have such a culture of fear and denial of death that we feel hopelessly inadequate in [...]

Living, dreaming, dying accounts for the totality of our experience. We are doing it all the time. The unusual question is – how well are we doing it? Mostly, we drift through these states without realising that we are constantly creating the conditions – physical, psychological, spiritual – for our future. If suffering, pain, happiness [...]