Familiarization

This is an ongoing series running through May to compliment the twice weekly meditation sessions that I will be hosting on YouTube (and are now archived on my YouTube page). If you have any questions, please contact me.

My background in meditation comes via the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, specifically the Gelug-pa tradition, which I have been practicing for 30 years now. Although I have complimented my Tibetan practice with studies of other spiritual traditions and philosophies, my center and focus is the Gelug-pa tradition. In speaking about meditation I like to strip the conversation of Buddhist material while keeping the essence of what is useful to a wider audience regarding the practice of meditation.

With this in mind I find it useful to reflect on the Tibetan word for meditation, gΓΆm. GΓΆm means ‘to familiarize’. Where I see meditation leading us comes out of this word gΓΆm.

Within the context of meditation we are looking to familiarize ourselves with our mind, to get to know it better, to spend time with our mind, to learn to be with and not react to difficult states of mind, and ultimately to transform our mind. The transformation here comes with familiarizing ourselves and developing positive states of mind - love, compassion, patience, generosity, and the like.