The Four common preliminares

[TaTa]

Hey i have been meditating for 8 months now. About a month and a half ago ive started taking lessons of calm abding and going to some dharma talks in a kagyu local center. Also studying dharma subjets on my own since ive started with this path. I havent taked refuge yet, but i do intent to that in the future.

I was wondering how can i effectivly do the four reminders:
.Impermanence and death
.The oportunity that brings the human rebirth
.Karma
.Dukha of samsaric existence.

I was thinking maybe intentionally thinking about this stuff before or after my meditation practice?
Some advice from fellow practicioners?

Thank you a lot

[tomamundsen]

Hey i have been meditating for 8 months now. About a month and a half ago ive started taking lessons of calm abding and going to some dharma talks in a kagyu local center. Also studying dharma subjets on my own since ive started with this path. I havent taked refuge yet, but i do intent to that in the future.

I was wondering how can i effectivly do the four reminders:
.Impermanence and death
.The oportunity that brings the human rebirth
.Karma
.Dukha of samsaric existence.

I was thinking maybe intentionally thinking about this stuff before or after my meditation practice?
Some advice from fellow practicioners?

Thank you a lot

My lama's advice was to read part of a text on one of the preliminaries for 15-20 minutes and then sit in silent meditation for 15-20 minutes just thinking about what you read. Visualize the metaphors described. Think whether the arguments are true; if so, convince yourself to remember their truth. To be thorough, you should really take each preliminary one at a time and just completely immerse yourself in it. For one week, just always think about impermanence with everything that you do, there is always an example in front of you. Do this for a week with each of the four thoughts. Perhaps spend a month on each. That was my lama's advice, but my actual practice was much less thorough than every waking moment

[futerko]

I do a practice with the four mind turnings at the start of each sitting. I also think it is important to see how they all fit together into one view.

So it's like... firstly this precious human birth which gives us the opportunity to practice the dharma for all mother sentient beings - I visualise sending rays from my heart to each realm; hell, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, asuras, devas.
Then impermanence in regard to every being, everything in a state of constant flux, maintaining the view of all beings in all the realms from the first mind turning.
The idea of causality in regard to the first idea - so that by me taking the view that all beings have buddha-nature I am practicing for their benefit simply by working with my own view.
Then the faults of a samsaric view and it's converse - that everything is interconnected and so the importance of working with mind and view (related to the previous points)

and then I take refuge before whatever sadhana I will do.

[TaTa]

Thank you both

tomamundsen Could you be a little more specific with the silent meditation?. You mean just sitting and thinking a bout this stuff?.

Thanks

[tomamundsen]

Thank you both

tomamundsen Could you be a little more specific with the silent meditation?. You mean just sitting and thinking a bout this stuff?.

Thanks

Yea, but doing a visualization at any chance you get. You can visualize the blind turtle floating out in the ocean, the number of stars in the sky vs. at night, etc; there are many metaphors in the teachings that can be visualized. For each of the hell realms, you can visualize what it would be like to actually be reborn there. What does it look like inside and what type of torture are you being subjected to? How hot or cold is it? How does it feel to have people saw off your arms and legs, beat you with red-hot hammers, etc. You can do that with preta and animal realms as well.

[TaTa]

Thanks. Thats quite interesting.

Any text that you would recommend?

[tomamundsen]

Thanks. Thats quite interesting.

Any text that you would recommend?

Yea - The Words of My Perfect Teacher (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/030016532 ... 787&sr=8-1) - it is intended for people practicing Longchen Nyingthig (Nyingma), but it is certainly fine for anyone to study for the preliminaries, especially the common preliminaries.

There is also A Guide to the Words of My Perfect Teacher (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/159030073 ... 909&sr=8-1). I found it completely unnecessary in order to understand the preliminaries and practices enough to do them, but a very valuable resource for the more complex aspects of the view not discussed in the original.