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A Member of the New Kadampa Tradition - International Kadampa Buddhist Union

What Is Meditation?

blue buddhaMeditation is a method for making your mind calm and peaceful. When your mind is peaceful you are free from worries and mental discomfort, and you are able to experience true happiness. If you train your mind to become peaceful you shall be happy all the time, even in the most difficult circumstances. If your mind is not peaceful, even if you have the most pleasant external conditions you will find it difficult to be really happy.

What are the Benefits of Meditation?
More and more people are using meditation to change their lives. With a daily meditation of as little as 10-15 minutes you will soon experience many benefits. You will feel more peaceful, and loving, more patient and less likely to experience anger, your concentration and effectiveness will improve, and your relationships with partners, colleagues, children, and others, will improve.

You can use meditation to deal more effectively with life's ups and downs. When life is busy, meditation creates an inner calm. When you are feeling stressed, meditation helps relax your mind and body. When you are confronted with difficulties, meditation helps you deal with them in a positive way. When relationships turn sour, meditation gives you the wisdom to heal them. When you are focused on your own problems, meditation gives you the compassion to care for others.

Meditation is also the means of developing your inner being. By training and familiarizing your mind with Love and Affection, Compassion and Wisdom, using methods now available to us in the west, you will progress on the same paths followed by great Yogis for the last 2500 years. Eventually you too will realise your full potential and discover the unchanging inner peace and happiness of enlightenment, and permanent freedom from all suffering. Then you will have the power to help all living beings.

What Meditations Can I do at Kosala?
Many different meditations are taught in Kosala Center, from simple breathing meditations, through the twenty-one meditations of Lamrim, up to the most advanced Tantric visualisation methods of the Vajrayana.

The twenty-one Lamrim meditations presented in The Meditation Handbook are the essential practices of all the stages of the path to enlightenment taught by Buddha Shakyamuni. You can learn and do these meditations throughout the year from September to June in our normal program and then again from June until late August during our Summer Program. at each Meditation 101 For Everyone class on Tuesdays at 7pm in the Meditation room of Kosala Center at 9 Walnut Street, Asheville, NC. 28801.

The accompanying text for the Meditation 101 For Everyone class is The Meditation Handbook by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.