Fundamentals of Meditation

Name: Fundamentals of Meditation
Rating: 4.9 (9 reviews)

How to familiarize with our mind

Created byPietro Falco

Last updated 1/2020

English

What you'll learn

What meditation is
Fundamentals of three forms of medidation: calm-abiding, loving kindness, and insight meditation
How to apply meditation to deal with difficult thoughts and emotions
Meditation practices to cultivate love, compassion, joy, and equanimity
Analytical meditation and work with conceptual distortions

Course content

4 sections • 15 lectures • 3h 18m total length

Introduction7:22
Explore the fundamentals of meditation through three modules: shaman meditation to cultivate awareness, a practice of compassion and loving-kindness, and analytical meditation for deeper reality insight, with daily life integration.

Meditation with Sound10:04
We start the practice of familiarize with awareness.
Useful references for this course:
[1] The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness, by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
[2] Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Meditation with Form8:19
Meditation with Feelings and Body Sensations12:42
Engage in body-sensation meditation and body scan to connect awareness with the body. Focus attention along the five senses and on emotions and thoughts to stay present in daily activities.
Meditation with Emotions11:51
Learn to use strong emotions as meditation objects by observing them with awareness, keeping attention on the emotion, and staying free from it during practice and daily life.
Meditation with Thoughs12:34
Practice thought meditation to observe thoughts and emotions with awareness that remains unchanged. Tame the monkey mind by listening, rejecting, or noting thoughts, and return attention to awareness.
Open Awareness9:04
Develop open awareness through object and objectless meditation, recognize the mind's perfection, stay with present moment sensations, and return attention when daydreaming.

Cultivating Love16:11
Cultivating love guides students through loving-kindness meditation to develop love, compassion, joy, and equanimity by generating kind thoughts from self to loved ones, neutral people, and those we dislike.
Cultivating Compassion10:57
Cultivate compassion through loving-kindness and compassion meditation, starting with self and extending to others, using sham meditation as the foundation to foster a positive mind and be free from suffering.
Cultivating Joy12:15
Cultivate joy by transforming negative emotions into compassion through mindful appreciation of personal qualities and simple actions, extending goodwill to others and rejoicing in their limitless happiness and achievements.
Cultivating Equanimity10:30
Explore how joy through simple appreciation and equanimity helps you stay present, avoid craving, and respond calmly to changing relationships and emotions.

Introduction to Analytical Meditation16:01
Explore analytical meditation by linking awareness with questions like what do I really want, observing thoughts as objects, and witnessing them to cultivate open awareness and compassionate insight.
Working on Conceptual Distortions31:52
Meditation to Analyze the Concept of "self"12:41
Analyzing the concept of thoughts and emotions15:53
Explore the unceasing play of the mind by analyzing thoughts, emotions, and feelings through mindfulness, revealing their emptiness and the nature of the mind.

Requirements

You are available to spend a few minutes per day to practice
You are interested in working and familiarizing with your mind

Description

In this course, we will cover the fundamentals of three meditation techniques: samatha, metta, and vipassana. With samatha, called also, calm-abiding meditation, we will start familiarizing with awareness, which is the essence of meditation. Samatha is a great tool to familiarize and make friend with what we call "monkey mind", and to use anything we experience as support for meditation. We will use this meditation to change the relationship with negative emotions and thoughts, transforming them into a way to know better our own mind. In the classical meditation and mindfulness teaching it is said that via meditation we transform poison into medicine. Negative emotions can be transformed into a tool for growth.

We will then cover meditation approaches to cultivate important positive emotions: love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. In particular, love is the aspiration that ourself and other experience happiness. Compassion is the aspiration that ourself and others are free from suffering. Joy is the contentment and appreciation for what we have right now. Equanimity is the freedom from excessive craving and aversion. Connecting with those emotions is of key importance to develop a more open and workable mind.

In the third part of the course we will practice analytical meditation, in order to work with conceptual distortion and fixations of mind.

Who this course is for:

Anybody can potentially receive strong benefit from learning the basics of meditation
Who wants to improve emotional intelligence and relationship with thoughts and emotions

Fundamentals of Meditation

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction1 lecture • 7min

Calm Abiding Meditation6 lectures • 1hr 5min

Cultivating the four positive quality of mind: love, compassion, joy, equanimity4 lectures • 50min

Analytical Meditation and Vipassana4 lectures • 1hr 16min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: