Practice
The retreats taught by Steve and Rosemary have as their basis many skillful meditation techniques taught within Theravadin Buddhism designed to help us develop Vipassana or Insight into Reality. Vipassana is an ancient Indian Pali word. It does not mean a specific technique, but the resulting Insight and Wisdom which comes from skillful methods. These help us to understand the underlying characteristics of ourselves and life. The techniques taught include the developing of:
- Concentration and mindfulness.
- Moment-to-moment awareness.
- The investigative quality of clear comprehension which helps to discover the deeper laws of cause and effect, and dependent arising nature of body and mind.
- Unselfish emotions such as compassion, lovingkindness, sympathetic joy and equanimity. These help to transform our intentions and develop our emotional well-being. Also they help evolve the mind sufficiently so it is capable of understanding.
- Yonisomanasikara, or Wise Reflection, which helps to develop the faculty of analytical investigation into the deeper truths and laws governing the body and mind.
Rosemary and Steve believe that the path of meditation and mental development must be treated as a whole.
If people focus only on a few limited techniques taken out of the context of the whole "way of living" described within Theravadin Buddhism, it will often result in these people not being able to nurture themselves in the multifaceted nature of their experiences with the world and their relationships with others.
Whereas, the path taken as a whole can help liberate us from problems and difficulties, and help us to find more inner peace.
The Buddha is recorded to have given appropriate ways of practice to people from all walks of life. This ranged from people actively involved in the everyday world with home, relationships, and work responsibilities to those devoting their life full-time to the inner journey.
Having been influenced greatly by the many varied examples of how the Buddha taught that have been recorded in the scriptures, Rosemary and Steve attempt to teach what is appropriate and beneficial for their students. They try to follow a simple principle: "You have to use the right medicine for a particular disease. No matter how good the medicine is, if it is not the appropriate one for the disease, then the disease cannot be cured."
Through an overall and balanced mental development practice, we may be able to gain Insight into our own nature and the laws of Nature; developing deep Compassion and Understanding of the origins of difficulties and stress, and how to end them. This Compassionate Understanding may enable us to deal more successfully with all of life's situations, whether pleasant or unpleasant, helping us to react to the arising and passing of experience within ourselves and the world in a more balanced way.
Various Buddhist meditation techniques of Mind Development are blended into a basic practice in order to give the meditator many different ways of developing beneficial mind qualities such as Compassion, Patience, Lovingkindness, Acceptance, Equanimity, Joy, etc. At the same time these help to lessen attachment to unbeneficial qualities such as anger, hatred, greed, worry, frustration, self-pity, envy, etc.
If we learn a balanced practice, we are able to use whatever is appropriate to deal with the often complex and difficult experiences in life. As we learn to react in a wise way, Peace, Balance and Strength start to be experienced within the purification and development of the mind.