Meditation

• 403Shamatha Meditation

  Explore shamatha meditation as a way to calm the mind and support both insight (vipassana) practice and everyday mental habits; evaluate personal experience with meditation; and demonstrate the practice by leading shamatha sessions that guide breath-based concentration while recognizing common challenges, obstacles, and their antidotes.
• 402Vipassana Meditation

  Analyze the distinction between awareness and its objects during vipassana practice, evaluate how investigating the three marks of existence (impermanence, suffering, non-self) through direct observation leads to insight, and synthesize understanding by creating guided practices that help others develop insight.
• 232The Three Yanas: Vajrayana Buddhism

  Identify the methodologies specific to Vajrayana Buddhism. Examine how tantric practices integrate ritual, visualization, and guru-disciple relationships, and evaluate how Vajrayana approaches to transformation relate to the foundational teachings preserved in Theravada and Mahayana traditions.
• 129The Buddha’s Equanimity

  Analyze the Buddha’s demonstration of equanimity in the kusa grass story by examining how he transcended social hierarchies and caste distinctions; evaluate how treating all beings with equal dignity challenges contemporary forms of bias and discrimination; and implement practices of unconditional respect that demonstrate recognition of innate goodness in all people regardless of their social status, background, or relationship to oneself.
• 523Five Wisdom Elements

  Implement practices that honor the five elements in daily life. Lead guided meditations that explore each element’s qualities and significance.
• 510Musical Awakening

  Analyze how specific musical elements in chosen pieces convey Buddhist values, evaluating how qualities like mindfulness, compassion, courage, or insight are expressed through sound.
• 414Visualization Practices

  Compare and contrast the use of visualization in different Buddhist meditations with its use in modern contexts, and design a visualization to support a personal goal that brings benefit to self and others.
• 400The Five Hindrances

  Identify and categorize the five hindrances to meditation practice with their corresponding antidotes; analyze how these obstacles manifest in contemporary life beyond formal meditation; and implement systematic approaches for recognizing and addressing hindrances while evaluating the effectiveness of traditional Buddhist remedies in modern contexts.
• 112Mindful Consumption

  Analyze the food cycle, differentiating its causes, conditions, and effects. Evaluate how elements from the outer environment transform into the body’s inner elements through eating and drinking. Guide others in a practice of mindful consumption.
• 208Sukhavati Sutras

  Compare Pure Land Buddhism with other forms of Buddhism, analyzing how the practice of chanting Amitabha’s name serves both as devotion and meditation and how visualizing a perfect realm can inspire positive daily actions.