Ariya B. Baumann left her career as a music and dance teacher in favour of her deep yearing to understand herself and the world. Based on her many years of practice, twenty-one of them as a nun in the Burmese tradition, she now lays a strong emphasis on the practice of loving-kindness (including metta chants) as a basis for the vipassana meditation practice. She has translated a number of Dhamma books from Burmese to English and German, among these are Mahasi Sayadaw’s ‘Manual of Insight’. She is a co-founder and president of ‘Metta In Action’ which supports a variety of social and medical projects throughout Burma, especially nunneries.
The reflection on death helps us prepare for this unavoidable fact, makes us look at our priorities, and brings much gratitude, joy, and lightness into our life.
Walking Meditation is an important and integral part of meditation practice with many amazing benefits. It facilitates insights into the four primary elements, conditionality, or the not-self nature of phenomena.
Thoughts are part of our existence as human beings. With the practice of meditation, the nature of the thought processes in particular and the nature of the mind can be understood by closely observing these thoughts whenever they arise.
The latent defilements are the base from which they manifest as either obsessive or transgressive defilements. Their abandoning, temporary or complete, can be acheived by the threefold training in virtue, concentration, and wisdom.
The three trainings in virtue, concentration, and wisdom enable a practitioner to suppress or abandon the different levels of defilements. But only the practice of vipassana mediation is able to completely uproot them.
