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Initial Studies in Dharma Practice & Meditation – Open Mind Centre

Initial Studies in Dharma Practice & Meditation – Open Mind Centre

Reading Resources - Initial Studies in Practice & - Open Mind Centre

"How can I take this Path deeper?”

As people prepare for and leave meditation retreat at Open Mind Centre, they often ask about reading and further studies that will give them a good understanding, and help keep their practice current and evolving.

Among the enormous wealth of useful resources, here is a list of works that you may find useful places to start or continue your explorations. Each of the references included here will support your dharma practice in finding reliable practical healing approaches as you travel your path. Through informed meditation and path practice, we learn to cut through the talk, including “spiritual" talk, and enter directly into our experience - which already - now - includes so much of what we are searching for.

Truly, it is not easy to really learn about meditation and path from reading and the internet alone. Our individual ways of understanding path practices and what happens in us as we work with them can be so varied. As well as getting a steady practice going, finding a qualified teacher who you can relate to is the most useful thing you can do. Knock on many doors! When one or more doors open, pay attention!

“Where to start?”

All the references here are highly recommended.

☀ Indicates a great place to start. Practical, well-grounded works which will help you with contemplation and meditation practice.

� Indicates inspirational books you may want to keep near where you meditate to help you reconnect with both the potential and the resources for your path journey. They are mostly poems and verses that can be dipped into and read for a short time as part of "tuning the instrument" before your main practice.

Each of these sections could be extended, depending on your interests. openmindcentre. Further study, meditation and Path support

If you wish to take your path studies further, ask. You can email or set up a Skype appointment at openmindcentre.asia. Also, we can put together a study program - in Pai or online, and/or a meditation retreat to explore more deeply any of the themes in these or other dharma works.

Meditation Practice & Finding Your Path - Start Here

The references in this section are based on “Southern schools" - , Vipassana etc . A good foundation in mindfulness has many benefits. Southern Schools teachings and practices also form the basis of the later Tibetan and teachings and practices

☀ A Path with Heart Exploring and finding your Path - practice oriented

☀ Jack Kornfield The Wise Heart A practical examination of the main understandings of and contemporary psychology

☀ Jon Kabat-Zinn Full Catastrophe Living meditation practice overview and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction approach and techniques

☀ Tarchin Hearn Natural Awakening: The way of the heart

Stephen Levine Guided , Explorations and Healings Many useful applied meditation exercises

Stephen Batchelor Buddhism Without Beliefs

Online

Ken McLeod - unfetteredmind.com

Tarching Hearne - greendharmatreasury.org

Jetsun Yeshe / Catherine Rathbun - friendsoftheheart.com

Life of the Buddha & his main teachings

☀ Thich Nhat Hanh Old Path White clouds openmindcentre.asia David & Indrani Kalupahana The Way of Siddhartha - a life of the Buddha

☀ Buddhist Dictionary - Manual of Buddhist terms and doctrines The teachings in detail with good cross referencing for ongoing study. Now available as an e-book online

Tibetan Buddhism - & approaches

Overview, Path & Practice

☀ Pema Chödron The Places That Scare You - start here for a practical introduction to many Mahayana and Vajrayana central practices and teachings clearly written for western practitioners

Catherine Rathbun Clear Heart, Open Mind Compassion practice (Chenrezi) in and for our modern world (available from friendsoftheheart.com and Open Mind Centre)

Dilgo Khyentse The Heart Treasure of the Awakened Ones Compassion Chenrezi practice

Sogyal The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Tulku Urgen Rinpoche and Trulshik Adeu RinpocheSkillful Grace: Practice for our times

Palden Sherab and Tsewang Dongyal Tara's Enlightened Activity

� Nichole Riggs : Songs on the spot Teaching songs spontaneously composed and sung buy one of 's greatest yogis and teachers to help his students. Among the several translations available, this book is clear and concise.

Ngon-Dro Foundation work

This work is not easy to learn from books alone - ask if you are interested

Jamgön Kungtrul The Torch of True Meaning: Instructions and the Practice Text for the Preliminaries Several translations with similar titles are available. This recent clear translation published by KTD Publications is recommended openmindcentre.asia Rinpoche The Excellent Path to Enlightenment

Kalu Rinpoche The Foundations of

Mahamudra

Again, this approach to the nature of your mind is truly not easy to learn without an active connection with a teacher. However, you can make a useful start with the books below. Ask if you get interested. It would be a very good idea to have a daily practice of Mindfulness Meditation for at least a few months before engaging this material

Kenchen Essentials of Mahamudra

Kenchen Thrangu Rinpoche The Ninth 's Ocean of Definitive Meaning

Dzogchen Ponlop Wild Awakening: The heart of Mahamudra and

Overview, History & Teachings

These are excellent resources for study and overview while you are engaged in meditation and path practice.

John Powers Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism

Reginald Ray 2 vols: Indestructible truth & Secret of the Vajra world A good overview for more serious students

Practical Contemporary Buddhist Practice

In addition to the references in the Meditation Practice & Finding Your Path section above (mostly Theravadin or Foundational approaches), here are some additional mostly Mahayana and Vajrayana approaches

Dzogchen Ponlop Rebel Buddha

Tenzin Palmo Reflections on a Mountain Lake: A western nun's talks on practical Buddhism ( is the nun whose biography is Cave in the Snow below)

Ken McLeod Wake Up to Your Life - in depth and detailed - most useful for intermediate and advanced levels

openmindcentre.asia Ken McLeod has many excellent teachings available as podcasts. You can check these out at unfetteredmind.org

Tarchin Hearn has many inspiring published books, e-books and downloads at greendharmatreasury.org (Tarchin is an inspiring teacher trained in Theravadin, Mahayana and Vajrayana approaches).

Chogyam Thrungpa Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Path from Hindu - Universalist Perspectives

☀ Nisargadatta I Am That

☀ Shantimayi In Our Hearts We Know

A.K. Ramanujan Speaking of Shiva - poems

☀ � Robert Bly (translator) Kabir: Ecstatic Poems - Universalist perspective, Hindu & Moslem-Sufi roots

Christ’s teachings from the original language of the New Testament

� Neil Douglas-Klotz Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Arameic words of Jesus Re-translations by a Sufi master from the original language in which Jesus taught. Wonderful fresh insights in which Jesus' teachings come alive, including the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes. Includes many practical meditation exercises. If you like this little book, read Douglas-Klotz's Blessings of the Cosmos and The Genesis Meditations

Neil Douglas-Klotz has other titles and audio teachings available at abwoon.org

Sufi perspectives

☀ � Rumi Hidden Music Poems

� David & Sabrineh Fideler Love's Alchemy Poems

Indries Shah Tales of the dervishes teaching stories of the Sufi masters over the past thousand years openmindcentre.asia Indries Shah The incredible Mulla Nasrudin Also several other titles of Nasruddin stories

Our Human Potential

All the books of poems in this list are wonderful ways to (re) connect with our human potential. This potential is with us every moment, no matter how we are feeling today. Keep some of these works next to where you meditate to bring freshness of overview and motivation. In particular, the poetry of Kabir, Rumi, Ryokan, Milarepa...

Meditation and healing

Jim Bedard Lotus in the Fire Meditation & spiritual practice working with severe illness

Ken Wilbur Grace and Grit Spiritual practice living and working with severe illness

Ged Sumner Body Intelligence Meditation: Finding presence through embodiment

If you are interested in Craniosacral therapy or using mindfulness approaches to explore the body, energy and health, Ged Sumner also has many more useful, well-grounded meditations on youtube and at bimeditation.com

Healing conditioning, trauma, memory - Contemporary Body-Based Psychology

Each of these books can help you find your way out of the sometimes endless discursive thought and speculation concerning the ”why" of an issue in your life, and into the "what" and "how". From one point of view, healing equals integrating, finding practical ways to include the parts that scare or worry us. Becoming integrated, becoming whole. Many people find it really helps them to let go of relying on our interpretations and beliefs in favour of opening to an intimate, practical relationship with our experience.

Robert Karen Becoming attached - First relationships and how they shape our capacity to love

openmindcentre.asia Peter Levine In an unspoken voice - how the body releases trauma and restores goodness

Judith Herman Trauma and recovery - the aftermath of violence

Babette Rothschild The body remembers - the physiology of trauma and trauma treatment

Neuroscience

Norman Doige The Brain That Changes Itself Everything is changing. Everything we do each day is changing us - not only in our life experience, skills and emotions, but in the very physical structures by which we perceive and make our cognitions too.

Path Biographies

Vicki Mackenzie Cave in the snow: A western woman's quest for enlightenment

Michele Martin Music in the Sky: The life, art and teachings of the 17th Karmapa

Chogyam Trungpa Born in Tibet

Heinrich Harrer & Thubten Jigme Norbu Tibet is My Country

Paramahansa Yogananda Autobiography of a yogi An extraordinary account of what is possible. Most people's paths - more than 99% of us - are much more 'ordinary' and gradual than this.

Irina Tweedie Daughter of Fire: A diary of spiritual training with a Sufi master

Where Path & Spiritual Community can go wrong

Martha Sherrill The Buddha from Brooklyn Daily life, teaching and confusion in a dharma community

Satya Bharti Franklin The Promise of Paradise: A woman's intimate story of the perils of life with Rajneesh This book raises many painful issues about life in a spiritual community. This is one woman's experience. Many people have benefitted greatly from Rajneesh / Osho's teachings.

openmindcentre.asia Tim Guest My Life in Orange: Growing up with the guru This really explores the distinction between freedom and license from the point of view of the kids growing up in a UK spiritual community.

Pilgrimage

Consistent meditation practice is what really counts. Some people find that visiting some of the actual places where the Buddha taught & where the teachings flourished can be a inspirational support for their practice:

Rana P.B. Singh Where the Buddha Walked: A companion to the Buddhist Places of There are lots of guides out there. This one seems to have several places not often mentioned.

There are so many wonderful possibilities. If you go nowhere else:

India: is where the Buddha was enlightened. While it can be busy these days, Bodh Gaya has a comparatively calm reflective quality often absent elsewhere in India. just outside Varanasi is where the Buddha first taught, a really interesting archaeological site and a good museum. The Ellora and Ajanta caves are truly remarkable and unforgettable - they are close to each other - see both.

Sri Lanka: Dambulla, Sigiriya, Anuradhapura, Mihintale - all fairly close to each other. They know Mana at Mihintale from a 3-month retreat, albeit many years ago now.

Nepal: Bodhgaya in and the many Tibetan monasteries around there. Namo Buddha monastery. Mana did a 3 month retreat here also.

Mana July 2018

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