(cover photo of double rainbow witnessed at last year’s meditation retreat at Garrison Institute. This year’s retreat is coming up Sep 29 - October 4!)
To accompany our Thursdays meditation group (8am ET, free for paid subscribers to The Road Home substack and podcast), where we have been working on different methods of moving from precise mindfulness to open awareness in formal meditation, this podcast—and this month’s theme—is tuning into open awareness everywhere in daily life (or rather, anywhere we can remember to do it!). It’s a really great practice for August, especially when you are spending time outside.
Classic Buddhism has an interesting term for everyday life, when we are moving about the world and interacting with sentient beings: it’s called “post-meditation.” Post-meditation, in simple terms, is “the rest of your life.” It's obviously a term that centralizes the experience of meditation as the period of time where we are working with our mind, our perceptions, our thoughts, our emotions, and our stuck places most directly. However, even if you are very regular with your practice, the meditation seat is not where we live the bulk of our life. Given this fact, learning to find more moments in the intensity and hustle of daily life where we can extend the practice of open awareness “On The Spot.”
Firstly, it’s helpful to revisit the three qualities of unconditional awareness.
What are the three aspects of unconditional awareness?
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