Our fresh approach is to shamatha, peaceful or tranquil abiding. Why a newness? Because

• the foundational components of meditating and practice consistently mature when we are consistent them.
• the foundational components are the same throughout all meditation practices in all traditions. The emphasis in a tradition demonstrates as, for example, meditating on a being or a quality of that being such as Lakshmi or Mother Mary or Gaia or Manjushri or on union with the divine, or surrender, or the state of pure Being. Yet, no matter the meditation focus, how to meditate will use the same component parts as has been used since human beings began meditating.
• not only the ability to accomplish the components matures for the practitioner, but one’s whole presence and way of being in the world does. Like fruit on the tree or vine, a ripening transpires when the causes and conditions support that. The fruit innately has the capacity for being nutritious and yummy but also to be available for any being who can be also nourished and pleased by that fruit. We have the same capacity. We ripen into that which we fully can be which is then available for those we share life with.
• and, because the foundational components of meditation carry through, unchanging in their nature and with only slight alterations in instruction, until one realizes that oneself IS tranquility, is serenity, is -at essence- always abiding; that such is the natural state. Hence, the foundation is as it is because, at essence, a sentient being is what the foundational trainings have been pointing toward all along. Meditation practice has been a vehicle, and we’ve come home.

So, then, what are the foundational components of shamatha and meditation practice?

1. being present. Here, now.
2. being aware/alert
3. learning to pause in the now, to be alert to how easily one is taken off into distractions; yet simply coming back to present moment, present tactile alertness.
4. learning to
   1. let the present Be the present, not adding or adjusting;
   2. learning to let awareness Be its natural alertness, its natural clarity and spaciousness;
   3. learning that the pause, actually, is the only real. All else is fabrication, projection, and so forth.

Various facets of human existence experienced in the now are used to facilitate these subjective components and their maturing.

• asana: posture, as well as one’s position or location such as on a cushion in a meditation room or on the grass or by a body of water together with all the sensory experiences of location in space-time; plus asana as in inner posture and attentiveness, and asana as in centered.
• breath and breathing: each provides specific foci, yet, both are in the here and now. We have used features of breathing such as its central path and non-deviation, or the sensation of spaciousness within the breath. As a practice, breathing evolves such that the practitioner expands and includes more and more in his or her awareness, alertness, and beatific resonating field; until one day maybe today, the field and Awareness is omni-presence, a vibrational field of transfiguration.
• concentration or one-pointed focus: as with the others listed, focus meditatively understood has sub-parts. Meditational focus is one-pointed and fixed while being wide and open. It becomes the bedrock of a sitting, thereby this one-pointed yet open quality of mind is recognized as the only real. All else is fluctuations of emotion-mind-self.
• resting in the experience.

We can see that, even with this brief outline, shamatha is a gift that keeps on giving.

In support of a freshness to this tried and true subject and meditation practice, we are using a quotation from the Kunjed Gyalpo Tantra: Listen! Understand! Meditate! Experience! It’s easy to see how these four words are within all that as been synopsized above.