torstai 21. helmikuuta 2019

The Future of Open Heart

The Future of Open Heart

by Kim Katami

Hello everyone. Here are some of my thoughts about the future of Open Heart. I'll be brief but we will return later.

Teachings Free of Charge

1. I would like Open Heart teachings to be free of charge. This includes Guidances to Awakening, Open Heart Yoga (incl. empowerments and techniques) and basically everything else that is now charged for. I want this because I wish all our practices to be given freely to anyone who is interested. There are many people out there who seek for the help we could offer them. To lower the treshold to get people to try or practices, it is best that they are freely given.

Events Free of Charge

2. I would like Open Heart retreats to be free of charge or with a very minimal fee. I wish to establish Open Heart as a strong yogic tradition that offers in-depth training and regular monthly retreats to those who wish to know themselves and those who wish to become professional yogis, i.e. existential professionals, guides and teachers. I feel there is need not only for effective system of training for lay people but a real need for trained yogis who have the skills and expertise to help others in their existential misery. At the moment, this sector of professionals doesn't really exist in the Western and world society.

Open Heart as Spiritual Congregation

3. I wish to establish Open Heart not as a business but as a spiritual/religious congregation. I wish Open Heart to be run like a church, based firmly on common ethics, which offers help to people primarily in the form of yogic practices but also in classical forms of relief, such as providing food and shelter to poor people wherever they may be.

Teachers and other personnel would be employees on monthly payroll, like christian priests and workers.

Open Heart Training Center

4. I wish to establish a proper training center(/s) somewhere, likely first in Europe since most of our practitioners are now here, where free teachings and retreats are held. This center will serve as a training facility as well as a home of Open Heart Sangha. Anyone who meets the basic requirements of honesty, sincerity and personal effort is welcome to stay for as long as they wish, free of charge or by minimal fee.

These are the four main points that I feel should be the future of Open Heart.

More later.

-Kim Katami

keskiviikko 20. helmikuuta 2019

Not Having A Lineage By Thinley Norbu Rinpoche

Not Having A Lineage
By Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
from Magic Dance

"Some people think lineage depends on a teacher. Especially some easterners believe that westerners cannot have lineage because they are not linked from birth to a spiritual teacher. Unless we are nihilists and believe only in the visible, we cannot judge the spiritual qualities of someone who has no visible teacher in this life. If someone takes water from the tap because we have not seen them take it from the source, is this reason to say it is not water? On a pilgrimage, pilgrims need a guide at first, but when they know the path, they can go alone. In the end, just because they have no visible guide, we cannot say they do not know the path. Of course, for most people lineage depends on a visible teacher and in general if we can find a good teacher it is necessary to have a guide. But according to the Buddhist tradition, if we believe in karma, we believe that because some people had a visible teacher in previous lives and have experience with the pure essence of their elements, they can be reborn to become enlightened without depending on a visible teacher in this life. Even if we have one hundred teachers, when we separate from our natural mind, we have broken lineage. Even if we have no teacher, when we are connected to our natural mind, we have true Wisdom Mind lineage."

Emptiness Meditation by Daniel P. Brown

Emptiness Meditation
by Daniel P. Brown
Author of the book Pointing out the Great Way

Now bring to mind your usual sense of self, your personal identity. You can evoke this and use it as an object of reflection. For example I would evoke Dan, Danness, and look squarely at Danness. The thing about self-presentation is that you can evoke it and you can observe it... So evoke your sense of self and observe it. Notice any personal characteristics you associate with that sense of self. Familiarise yourself with the target of your search... And now take your awareness... And let your awareness roam thought the regions of your body. See if you can find any thing in itself, any independently existing thing that is that personal identity, anywhere in the field of bodily experience. You have to actively search... And the more you search anything independently existing, any thing in itself, the more what you search for will be seen from your awareness as unfindable. Emptiness practice... is in the unfindability of the target... If you think you find the independent basis for that sense of self, if you find any thing that's substantial, roam around in that area and break it down to smaller units of analysis... OK, now evoke your sense of self, your personal identity once again... Familiarize yourself with the target of the search. Evoke your personal identity and notice any personal characteristics you associate with that sense of self... Now, take your awareness and let it roam through mental content. Do you find any independently existing thing that is that self?... As you continue to search at some point there is a shift in your basis of operation. What remains right here is the awareness itself, no longer obscured by the empty construction of the personal identity. You open up to the level of awareness that is cleaned up of the cloud of self. And you start operating from that instead of operating out of self-mode.”

The recording can be found from this page, under: ”Meditation on Insight Training or ”Emptiness”.