Kulaprabha

One evening I went over from Taraloka to Llangollen and led a workshop for the Llangollen sangha class to introduce the System of Meditation. I did it as an interactive exercise where I asked questions and by doing a bit of brainstorming we came up with some collective answers to those. Everyone at the class meditates regularly and knows the two basic practices of the mindfulness of breathing and the metta bhavana, so they could engage with the questions pretty well from their own experience.

The questions I asked are as follows. I suggest you have a go at coming up with your own answers and responses. And then you can download notes of what emerged at that Llangollen class and compare with your own.

What are the four aspects of the WBO system of meditation?

What are possible models for how this system works?
(See my talk from 2003 Order Convention - An Introduction to “The System of Meditation Revisited”.

Then questions about each of the four factors:

firstly, mindfulness

• of what?
• how?
• what benefits might it bring?

then, positive emotion: what’s called for in this ?

• when to be positive?
• how?
• What helps us to be positive ?
• what benefits does it bring?

can you see connections between mindfulness and positive emotion?

next, spiritual death

• how to explore this ?
• why would we bother to do this?
• what benefits does it bring?

can you see connections between positive emotion, mindfulness and spiritual death?

and lastly, spiritual rebirth

• how to practice it?

can you see connections between spiritual death, mindfulness, positive emotion and spiritual rebirth?

what does it take to engage with all this?

Here is the same set of questions with the responses and reflections from the Llangollen class. You can download the document file here (38KB):

System of Meditation Introductory Workshop

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