Cattāri Brahmavihārā

I have returned to doing the practices required for the Dharma Path program lately after having received an email from the lama who is my mentor in the program both because I feel I have yet much to learn and because I don’t want to leave it unfinished.

The training at this point consists of shamatha (samatha) or tranquility meditation and contemplation on the preciousness of our human life. Specifically, the great boon it is to have been born into the right conditions to practice. Just to reflect on the fact that I could have easily been born in a country where the Dhamma is not practice or is illegal, without the capacity to understand our our simply to have remained unloved upon hearing are all very really possibilities. In fact, the probability of any human being growing to adulthood and actually practicing the Dhamma must be infinitesimally small. How fortunate are we?