Clear Bell Meditation

The Clear Bell Meditation Community is a practice sangha(community) that is committed to helping anyone who wishes to achieve the peace and liberation that is offered through an insight meditation practice.  The reward for our efforts is in finding what is often called "Big Mind", "Universal Mind" or "Buddha Mind", that detached view that gives us control over what the Buddha called our "monkey minds."   This is not a "religion"; no dogma or mysticism is offered here.

 

Your brain has an agenda which is to keep you safe, fed, get you mated and protect the offspring.  I will call that portion of the brain that does this your “self”.  Your self accomplishes its task by perceiving its surroundings through the five senses and determining what is there that it deems important to its agenda.  Combining its sensory input with your extensive memory and logical capability, your self then reaches judgments about the things it perceives.

 

We call these “dualistic” judgements because they are a determination about whether something is good or bad for the self’s agenda.  Their descriptions are couched in concepts such as “Yes/No”, “Good/Bad”, “Approach/Avoid”, “Love/Hate”, “Stay/Leave”.   You get the idea.   Once your self reaches a dualistic judgement your brain creates a feeling or emotion that pushes you to execute that judgment.   Your self does this relentlessly even leading to what is sometimes called a “flood of emotions.”

 

The times when we suffer discomfort arise when we blindly identify with the judgment that our self has given us, when we proceed to execute our self’s instruction without insight.   When that happens we see that instruction and emotions as inescapable and as an accurate picture of the world around us.  Then the feelings are inescapable and we may either be deliriously happy (if self’s agenda is met) or miserable (if self’s agenda is frustrated).

 

2,500 year ago the Buddha recognized this (his observations are being confirmed by modern science) and he gave us a path to developing a different relationship with our selves.  He gave us a practice for getting distance from the incessant judgment factory that your self operates, seeing it from a distance, in effect transcending it.  You get to see the effluent judgment of your self and make a better choice.

 

This is the view that is referred to variously as “Big Mind”, “Enlightenment”, “Buddha Mind” and “Nirvana” among others.  You can find that and the misery you yourself suffer and create for others can cease.  That path involves mindfulness, meditation and living in a healthy way.   We will be honored to work to help you find Big Mind and to get liberation from the judgment mill that is run by your self.  We look forward to seeing you in the Clear Bell Meditation Community.