The quote below is by Dr. B. Alan Wallace. A Ph.D from Stanford, Tibetan Buddhist scholar and teacher and former Buddhist monk of 14 years. Organizes the prestigious Mind and Life conferences with HH Dalai Lama. Founder of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and has written more articles and books then I can count. Paul and I are doing a retreat with him in June here in Norway. His teaching and standards are what we need more of: If one is committed to the contemplative path, and one is to develop Shamatha then this requires a kind of professional commitment that we are actually are very familiar with, but we just have not applied it to meditation. A lot of people think they are very serious meditators since they meditate for an hour or two a day, but frankly, that is the kind of commitment that a lot of golfers have or people who jog or people who work out in a weight room. It is not a professional commitment, that is a commitment of a serious hobby. But if we take a brain surgeon or a medical doctor, I don’t think you will find any of them who will become a professional by learning their trade for an hour or two a day. It doesn’t happen. It takes a period of years of absolute concerted effort—8, 10, 12, 14 hours a day. Every day. But this is the nature of professional training. It requires years of very concerted effort. In Buddhism and in other contemplative traditions, it is well known that to truly become an adept, an expert in meditation, requires no less of a commitment then it requires to become a professional neuroscientist.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 22:34:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015