How Do We Bring Compassion to Life?
In our meditation, our “practice makes perfect.” This imbues our life with presence, healing, and inspiration. To inspire your practice, we are happy to offer a free guided meditation with Lopön Pieter Oosthuizen. Please see below.
Lopön Pieter Oosthuizen will be teaching the Mahayana – Opening the Heart of Compassion Online Course, beginning this Friday, April 29. Join us for this powerful inner journey, nurturing compassion, and living with grace and equanimity.
In this 15-minute meditation, Lopön Pieter Oosthuizen guides us into Tonglen (sending & receiving) from a place of spaciousness.
The Mahāyāna (Great Vehicle) carefully cultivates compassion in our lives. Beginning with opening to the Great Mother, we plant the seeds of wisdom. In meditation we nurture the jewel of compassion. And in activity we share this with the world. Why is this powerful? Because it offers us a rich and abundant existence, which relieves all suffering. This jewel fulfills our wishes, and delights our senses.
Compassionate activity is the perfection of practice, and can be found in people all around us. We can say that someone is an emanation of a great deity, because the enlightened qualities of the deity are alive through them. For example, the Dalai Lama is an emanation of Avalokiteshvara (or Chenrezig in Tibetan – “the Buddha of Compassion”) because he acts tirelessly with loving concern for all beings. Likewise, when we offer our unique gifts to the world, we are in co-creation with the divine.
Join Lopön Pieter Oosthuizen for the Mahayana – Opening the Heart of Compassion Online Course (April 29 – June 17). Over eight weeks, enjoy two hours of teachings with Lopön Pieter and two two-hour meditation practices each week. Develop everyday compassionate activity, enhancing the best in you and what you offer to the world.
Register today – click here »
This course is open to anyone who has completed the Sutrayana Retreat. If you have not, and are interested in attending, please email our Registrar here.
In Buddhism, when we complete a compassionate act, we accumulate merit. This accumulation of merit is like a vast ocean, which continues to grow as our compassionate activity grows. This completes our relationship with the cycle of compassion, awakening us to infinite possibilities in the world, and peace in our hearts.
We hope you enjoyed this exploration into compassion, and we look forward to welcoming you to the Mahāyāna Online Course.
~With Blessings,
Tara Mandala
Photos: Header (Alan Kozlowski), Tonglen video photos of the Bhutanese mountains (J. Brownlee), the Dalai Lama (National Geographic)
