Unfettered Mind

Sufi teaching story: “The Story of Fire”; examples of ways traditions move away from direct experience and straightforward application in life; what do we seek in practice?; guided meditation: primary practice; expanding to include the full field of experience, and resting; discussion of uses of such an experience; explanation of reasons that traditional texts were restricted.

Pointing out the meaning of the perfection of wisdom; cutting the four demonic obsessions; four stages of Chö practice.

Other methods of Chö ritual; simpler form of Chö ritual; guided visualizations.

Recitation of daily Chö ritual; guided visualization; purification practice; simpler form of transference practice; white feast and red feast visualizations.

Recitation of daily Chö ritual with commentary; opening the door to the sky transference; visualization instruction combining syllables, colours, body and six realms; commentary on transference.

Section by section performance of the daily Chö ritual, utilizing the practices described in the preceding podcast; short Q&A at the end.

Motivation for Chö: transforming our experience of disturbances and negativity as embodied in the eight demonic obsessions; outer, inner and mystical refuge: opening to the totality of experience; visualizing and inviting Machik Labdrön and the four guests.

Origins of Chö from the Diamond Sutra; Machig Labrön and Dampa Sangye; definition of Chö as creating difficult experiences and developing the ability to experience them completely; Chö vs Shi-jé; relationship between Chö and taking and sending; outer, inner, and secret Chö.

Participant’s questions and Ken’s responses: individual and shared experience, attention penetrating patterns, expressive and receptive poles of a pattern, taking and sending. The audio for this series of podcasts was originally recorded on audio cassette. As such you may find the sound to be of a lower quality.

Bring attention to all activities; learn to use a few tools very deeply; whatever happens, it is not necessarily about you; use intention to die to life of conditioned existence; be in what you are experiencing right now; how to interact completely with your teacher/experience; engage the three faculties: body, speech and mind. The audio for this series of podcasts was originally recorded on audio cassette. As such you may find the sound to be of a lower quality.

Proficiency: knowing what you want from your practice, achieve a sense of balance, joy as a consequence of no separation; commitments: be clear about your intentions, appropriate action, relate to the totality of your experience; behave naturally; don’t talk about others’ shortcomings; don’t dwell on others’ problems. The audio for this series of podcasts was originally recorded on audio cassette. As such you may find the sound to be of a lower quality.

Five forces in life Intention: being clear about your intention in every aspect of your life; familiarization: clearing away obstacles to presence; seeds of virtue: taking care of the interior environment; repudiation: dying to the past; aspiration: using faith to reinforce intention. Five forces in death: generating virtue, aspiration, repudiation, intention and familiarization.The audio for this series of podcasts was originally recorded on audio cassette. As such you may find the sound to be of a lower quality.

Participant’s experience and questions; resting attention in experience; letting patterns open to you; resting in the experience of adversity. The audio for this series of podcasts was originally recorded on audio cassette. As such you may find the sound to be of a lower quality.

Vajrayana approach to taking and sending; exploring imbalances in experience; moving right into experience.

See clearly, know what is, act without hesitation; focus on how can I help instead of focusing on survival, emotional needs or identity; guided meditation; response vs reaction; open to the whole of your life.