Natural Wakefulness: Discovering the Wisdom We Were Born With

by Gaylon Ferguson, Sakyong Mipham (Foreword)

Wakefulness is our natural enlightened, complete, perfect in wisdom and compassion. It’s not something outside ourselves that we need to attain or become. But it’s also true that some effort is required to get in touch with it—and that effort is what spiritual practice is about. Gaylon Ferguson highlights two essential aspects of the path of learning to trust that we are already naturally awake and committing to meditation practice. And he shows how each supports the other in our efforts to become fully who we are.

He begins by showing how to understand natural wakefulness in ourselves and how to gain confidence in it. Then he teaches the fundamentals of meditation and goes on to provide exercises and guided contemplations intended to help us experience innate wakefulness. Along the way, he shares selections from question-and-answer sessions with students from retreats that he's led that provide practical advice for manifesting awareness in daily life. Finally he shows how we can reinforce and support each other in wakefulness through community.

This long-awaited first book from this renowned meditation teacher is a complete introduction to meditation and the spiritual path—suitable for both beginners and seasoned practitioners as a source of inspiration and insight.

To learn more about the author, visit his

Genres: Buddhism, Meditation, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 2009

Reviews

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

For any who hope to undertake a meditation program, this book is very helpful. Drawing from the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa and the Kagyu lineage, Ferguson really knows how to instruct meditators in the Vipashana, Shamata and open-awareness practices. These are the teachings which new monks learn, and yet they are extremely relevant today. Further, he goes into how true materialism hinders our abilities to access happiness. It's a hard book to describe, but a wonderful book to dive in and use for meditation. Not sure my review is all that good - just know that if you are a meditator or even interested in meditation, this is a great book to use to start a regular practice.

[Jane Botten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good book for anyone who wants to seriously follow mindful meditation in a traditional way.

[eHawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent minfulness instruction and buddhist concept book, with very accessible language. I think this book makes an excellent companion either before or after reading Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, especially chapter 11.

[LC Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, accessible, very readable book on meditation. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in trying meditation and looking for a practical, down to earth guide without a lot of 'woo-woo' stuff.

[Totochelamouche · Rating 3 out of 5]

Place your hands, palms down, on your thighs, and again lower your chin slightly (there is more tendency to daydream when the chin is tilted up).

Meditation develops our basic appreciation for "what is." Our focus is usually divided - between awareness of what is happening and what we think should be occurring. "By now, I should be feeling my 'global body' - but I'm not. Thoughts are happening - and they shouldn't be. When does the exciting, ecstatic part of meditating kick in?"

A mentality of wealth, on the other hand, of abundance, involves generously allowing our feelings to be as they are. For once we're not busily trying to manipulate them so that we'll feel better. Our basic well-being is not at stake; we're not under attack from our feelings. Instead we're starting from the experience - even if only a glimpse - that our nature is, fundamentally, already whole and in fact completely filled with well-being.

I thought of another analogy: when we're bored it's like being hungry and wandering up and down the aisles of a giant supermarket looking for something to eat. There are literally thousands of items to eat in a large market, but we keep insisting on this particular product - say a new brand of cookies - that they don't have. The feeling of boredom is as though we're starving - complaining that there's 'not enough' - when all around us is a sea of plenty. Boredom is our rejection of that plenty, our insistence on the one product that isn't there.

In a sense we're learning to bear ourselves, to bear with the more difficult mountains and valleys in our emotional terrain. We're strengthening our ability to bear emotional discomfort. My friend Tony mentioned that, particularly when he was tired, he was easily frustrated and frequently lost his temper. Often we verbally lash out at others [...] because we cannot bear our own feelings of irritation. We strike out as though it will relieve an inner pressure - as though we will feel better if we can let some steam off with an angry remark.
Actually, just the reverse is the case - the next time we are feeling irritable, we are even more likely to lash out in anger again, as though a deeper groove has now been established in the pattern of our behavior. We're literally training ourselves in a karmic pattern of dealing with irritation by lashing out. Being able to bear - to embrace with loving-kindness - our "negative" and uncomfortable feelings, is the only way to break the vicious cycle or reaction, acting out, feeling irritated again, reacting.

The problem is our toxic fixation on something outside to make us feel better about ourselves. That fixation becomes the source of greed, aggression, fear, jealousy, lying, and deception. What do I have to do to get it? If I lose the object of my romantic quest, I'm left spinning, lost. If I don't get the next golden carrot dangled before me, I feel flattened into self-hatred. Then we decide to buckle down and really get serious: if anyone interferes with me getting who or what I want (what I feel I need to be happy), look out! The repercussions range from domestic abuse to warfare. As the bumper sticker asks: "How did our oil get underneath their sand?"

Are we being cowardly and weak - pretending to "go along just to get along," all the while storing up resentment that will eventually spill out in some sharply stinging remark?

[Chris Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful and well-written argument for meditation, with one caveat, which is that Sakyong Mipham wrote the forward and he and his father Chogyam Trungpa are referenced or quoted on just about every page. This is to be expected given that Gaylon Ferguson is a student of Sakyong Mipham's and very well steeped in the Shambhala tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, but given the allegations that have come out about both Sakyong Mipham and Chogyam Trungpa over the years since this was published, it's definitely an elephant in the room that I had trouble ignoring. None of this is Gaylon Ferguson's fault, obviously, and this is still a helpful text for anyone looking to begin or get deeper with their meditation practice.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t finish. It could be a great read for someone if meditation is too foreign if a topic and if their mind needs to be constantly sent in different directions in order to focus, but it was too disjointed for me. Also, thick with buzzwords and word salads. I could summarize the whole book in one sentence.

[Kristen Jorgensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the structure of the book. Q and A plus guided practice plus quoting teachers and offering perspective.

[Todd Mayville · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2010/0...

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars. This was a good, clear instruction on meditating and including sensations within the body and mind. I've been utilizing some of it in my practice already.

[Helen Carter]

Reading as part of my study for the IDproject's meditation teacher training