Spiritual Rebirth

Rebirth in this sense is the realisation of our true, awakened nature. As such, the spiritual rebirth aspect of the System of Meditation mainly represents not a practice but an actual realisation of insight or Awakening (waking-up to what we truly are). This isn’t something that we can ‘do’ — it just happens!

However, there are practices in which we imaginatively enter into the spirit of this stage. Many devotional practices (ceremonies, chanting and making of offerings) are ways of opening our hearts to the Buddha, to Awakening and to those who have fully Awakened before us. This ‘heartful’ response it itself a kind of insight practice.

Most members of the Western Buddhist Order also practise sadhanas — formal visualisations of the Buddha or of other Awakened figures with mantra-recitation. The effects and intentions of these meditations are similar to those of devotional practices — one ultimately becomes the Buddha that one contemplates.

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