I am writing from the Dieppe – Newhaven ferry, returning from a week of solitary retreat in my beloved Normandy. My hope was to immerse myself in 10 to 12 hours of practice each day – the practice at hand being Guru Yoga, the fourth practice of the Vajrayana preliminaries, or Ngondro¹. Practicing for that …
Marking season nearly through, I managed to carve out four days in my week to press on with Ngondro practice. Just in the use of that phrase, “press on” hints at a flavour of something! As I have explained previously on this blog, Ngondro are the four “preliminary practices” a student of Vajrayana does in …
On my recent retreat with Judy Lief in upstate New York, I took a deep dive into the teachings of “Mahamudra“. Literally translated, Mahamudra means “great seal” – and like a wax seal used in days gone by, a seal of authentication. The practices of Mahamudra reveal the ‘authentic’ nature of mind to the meditator; …