Mipham's Sword of Wisdom
This practical meditation workshop will focus on the practice of analytical vipashyana meditation through the three stages of prajna: hearing/studying or discriminating; contemplating or investigating; and meditating or resting in the meaning discerned. We will use the famous text by Mipham Rinpoche as our guide through this process, supplemented by excerpts from Analytical Meditation by Acharya Lama Tashi Gyaltsen and from Mind in Tibetan Buddhism, a traditional Lorik text, which is an explanation of the Classifications of Mental States.
In more detail, the discriminating phase involves identifying objects of experience as being matter, mind, or mental factors; subjects that experience in terms of the type of cognition, especially its validity, and the resulting cognition of objects by subjects, its process, aspects and types. Investigating involves clearly identifying the three main aspects of the belief in a self – as being single, permanent or ongoing through time and independent. Finally we will explore the resting phase of meditation through the five absolute bodhicitta slogans of Atisha and the six precepts of Tilopa.