When I launched From the Pure Land as a blog almost six months ago, I was comfortable writing but not public speaking. My mild cognitive impairment (MCI) resulted in too many pauses for me to grasp and say the word I was looking for, and sometimes, the word I spoke was not the one I intended.
As it turned out, the more I exercised my writing neuronic connections, the more the speaking connections improved. I still speak slowly and make mistakes, but I felt ready to start podcasting, which is easy to add to Substack blogging. So I record and release some of the From the Pure Land blog posts as podcasts as well.
My goal in it all is to spread the teachings and practices that have helped me live in a pure land of joy and compassion. The podcasts help me reach more people. They have been listened to in 36 countries, and we’re approaching our first 1,000 downloads. What’s especially exciting about that is the opportunity to include some meditations.
The current edition is aimed at the listeners. It’s a guided meditation on what has been called the Supreme Contemplation—four thoughts that turn the mind away from worldly concerns and toward spiritual practices, away from suffering and toward peace and loving equanimity. It’s an important component of Tibetan Buddhism and a key part of my daily practice.
For a fuller discussion of the four thoughts, here’s a link to a teaching by Alexander Berzin and one to an article called The Supreme Contemplation by Andrew Holecek in the Winter 2013 edition of Tricycle.
The four thoughts are:
The preciousness of human life.
Impermanence and death.
Karma or the way causes and conditions always have a result.
The way our minds create so much of our suffering.
If you’re reading this as a blog post, consider clicking the arrow above and joining me and the podcast listeners in a meditation. You can also click on the tab that says “Transcript.”
From the Pure Land has thousands of readers and hundreds of subscribers in 32 U.S. states and 14 countries. The podcast has listeners in 36 countries. Consider:
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