This week we have a guided meditation as I know a few of my on-demand subscribers are injured this week - wishing you a full recovery.
This practice is inspired by a really useful book called Taming the Tiger by Akong Tulku Rinpoche - a book of Tibetan teachings for improving daily life. The first half of the book includes Buddhist teachings by Akong Rinpoche and the second half includes a series of mental exercises and meditations to do that will help you to understand how to practice the teachings. It's this practical aspect of Buddhism that I really love as it really helps you to change the way you perceive things and then take different actions in life.
Why not add this on to the end of a yoga asana practice so that you are alert and awake - try the Sivananda sequence for a full traditional practice or Sun Salutations short flow.
Akong Tulku Rinpoche was a tulku in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism and co-founder of the Samye Ling Monastery in Lockerbie and the Centre for World Peace and Health at the Holy Isle.
At the age of 4, he was taken to Dolma Lhakang to receive an education that included the traditional training of a tulku as well as Tibetan medicine.
Along with other notable Kagyu lamas, such as Thrangu Rinpoche and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, he later went to the monastic university of Shechen Monastery where he received a transmission of the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages from Kongtrul Rinpoche of Shechen
In 1959, in the aftermath of that year's Tibetan Rebellion, he fled to India at the age of twenty, notably with the 11th Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and his younger brother, who later became known as Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche. Of the 300 in the party, only 13 arrived successfully in India. In 1963 Chogyam Trungpa and Akong Tulku were sponsored to go to Oxford where Trungpa would study comparative religion at the university. As only Trungpa had a bursary, Akong worked as a hospital orderly in the Radcliffe Infirmary in order to support himself, Trungpa and Lama Chime Tulku Rinpoche (who had joined them at Oxford).
After Trungpa Rinpoche’s departure to the US in 1970 Akong Rinpoche took over the leadership and direction of Kagyu Samye Ling, which developed into a place of peace and spirituality, with a strong emphasis on active, selfless compassion, open to anyone of any faith. Akong Rinpoche also spent his life rebuilding and supporting monasteries in Tibet and was was killed in China by two Tibetans in 2013. Samye Ling and the Holy Isle is now under the direction of Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche, whom I've had the pleasure of hearing speak at Samye Ling - a no-bullshit, humorous teacher.