Dr. Lye begins this series on Buddhist meditation by anchoring the series on a famous quote from The Dhammapada: “All states of being are determined by the heart. It is the heart that leads the way. Just as the wheel of the oxcart follows the hoof print of the animal that draws it, so suffering will surely follow when we speak or act impulsively from an obscured heart.” This “heart” is awareness and “learning to recognize awareness” and “knowing the obscurations” is at the heart of meditation taught in this series. In this lesson, Dr. Lye also leads a guided meditation that begins with developing awareness of “being body” as this is the basis of developing and refining our recognition of awareness and its obscurations.

This class begins with Dr. Lye guiding participants in a meditation grounded in developing greater awareness of “being body,” or “being in body.” Dr. Lye recommends using the arising and ceasing of breath and the sensations associated with that process as the object to experience in this meditation. One also extends awareness to the sensations that arise at the “contact points” between what we label as “body” and “not-body.” In the teaching portion of this class, Dr. Lye first addresses a number of practical questions regarding challenges to meditating. Dr. Lye also emphasizes an approach to meditation as less about “mastering techniques” or “perfecting a skill” but more about relinquishing entanglements and opinions by refining our recognition of awareness (citta) and its qualities as well as its obscurations.

Dr. Lye begins this class with some instructions on posture: how to position oneself on one’s seat (whether a chair, or on a cushion or bare floor), what to do with one’s eyes, shoulders, etc. before continuing on with the guided meditation portion of this class. Here, participants are guided to work with awareness of the process of breath: how breath arises/enters and ceases/leaves, what is the felt-sense of breath, what sensations can be noted, and staying with the “one breath.” In the teaching portion, Dr. Lye discusses the “three characteristics of becoming” (dissatisfaction, inconstancy, and not-self) and shows how our meditation practice relates to these three characteristics. Seeing these three characteristics leads to greater freedom. To see them and to awaken to them, training in awareness is necessary. This class ends with another session of guided meditation. In this session, Dr. Lye emphasized developing awareness in relation to space—physical space, space between breaths, space where sounds occur, and space between thoughts.

In this class, Dr. Lye starts by reminding us that more important than learning techniques and methods of meditation and choosing this over that, is to learn how to relate to all the techniques and methods offered. Furthermore, to know how to relate and apply the methods should lead us to changing our minds/attitudes. The Buddha was fundamentally not interested in philosophy, metaphysics—the “big questions.” Instead he was concerned about and addressed the existential “problem” of birth and death. In this last class of the series, Dr. Lye addresses a number of truisms often associated with Buddhism and shows how many of them are detrimental to our effort to tend to our inner worlds. You will come away with many helpful pointers and clarifications!