Establishing Awareness: An Introduction to Buddhist Meditation

An Online Buddhist Meditation Course for Beginners

The twenty-first century is ripe with complex challenges and meditation is one of the most effective ways to deal with them.

Buddhist meditation is for everyone, not just monastics or renunciants. We all have the capacity to rediscover a sense of innate wellbeing, giving us the confidence to face anything that comes our way in life. While mindfulness apps offer an accessible entry-point for curious students, they are insufficient for giving you the tools to develop an effective lifelong meditation practice grounded in theory. Science has just started to catch up with this ancient practice, and peer-reviewed research makes the clear case that meditation changes your body and brain. But the full path of Buddhist training goes much further than this.

Helping you reach your highest potential.

Meditation is not about peak experiences. It is not merely about feeling good, bypassing the difficulties of life, or mitigating stress. These would sell the Buddhist path short. The goal of Buddhist meditation is none other than the complete uprooting of the latent causes of suffering. We suffer not because of the world around us but because of our internal reactions to this world. The path of meditation teaches us to skillfully observe what is happening within our bodies and minds in a way that liberates us from the apparant burden of being.

Buddhist meditation adds a methodology and a clear path to the saying happiness is within.

Why Buddhist meditation is uniquely suited to meet the challenges of the modern age.

In this age of abundance, all of our basic needs are met. Yet, people are suffering from a new host of challenges such as high-stress, scattered attention, obsession with materiality, and lack of fulfillment. The Buddhist path offers a straightforward training regime to awaken us from this state of discontent.

The path can be broken down into this basic framework.

We begin by restraining ourselves from acting in emotionally disturbing ways such as stealing, lying, and acting in anger. When we act in these ways - we harm ourselves first. The mind of someone stealing is not a peaceful mind. As such, we must first practice virtuous restraint to calm down our minds. If we continually engage in emotionally disturbing actions, we will be too coarse to engage in meditative practice.

Once we have a foundation of virtue, we further sharpen our minds using concentration meditation. We hone our ability to hold in frame, without being distracted, a highly resolved picture of reality. We are able to notice subtle details of our experience that are normally overlooked. We train this skill with breath meditation.

Finally, with our sharpened minds, we observe the changing nature of reality and gain insight into the high-level patterns of our experience. In the same way that building a skyscraper that is not in accordance with Newton’s Laws leads to suffering (and a collapsing building), living a life out of harmony with the patterns of experience leads to discontent.

As our insight continues to develop, we can further refine our virtuous restraint to live more in alignment with our realizations. This in turn allows us to practice concentration more effectively, leading to an even sharper mind that can discern even more subtle truths. And so the cycle continues.

Who am I and why I created this course.

My name is Sasha Manu and I am a Science teacher and writer based in New York City. I have been practicing Buddhist meditation for over a decade, attending my first 10 day silent meditation retreat at age seventeen. I have a Master in Buddhist Studies degree from The University of Hong Kong and wrote my dissertation on the practice of Satipatthana, the meditation teaching that forms the foundation of modern mindfulness practice. I have attended 7 extended silent meditation retreats ranging from 7 to 10 days, including an intensive study of the Satipatthana discourse. The Buddhist path is the most reliable, accessbile, and effective path to happiness I have ever encountered.

I understand that not everyone has the ability to take weeks off work to attend a silent retreat or to travel across the Himalayan range. However, everyone has the ability to appreciate these teachings and benefit from them. The course I will outline below is specifically geared towards providing you with practical tools to understand your life and reclaim your birthright of fundamental wellbeing.

Establishing Awareness: An Introduction to Buddhist Meditation

The course includes 6 Modules comprised of:

6+ Hours of Pre-Recorded Lecture Content
2 Hours of Pre-Recorded Guided Meditations
6 Module Coursepacks filled with over 100+ pages of key readings from core texts, essays, and notes
Access to a Discord Community of earnest practitioners

The six modules are titled and detailed in the video and image below.

Together we will explore the history and evolution of Buddhist practice through a grounded and progressive sequence of meditation exercises. We will understand how, from a basis of virtue, one can begin to calm the mind and use it to systematically investigate reality. Ultimately, we will consolidate our understanding through seated meditation and explore the power of concentration (anapanasati), loving-kindness (metta), and insight practices (vipassana).

This conceptual grounding in Buddhist theory paired with a suite of home-practice techniques will allow you to experientially understand that joy and wellbeing can be cultivated through discipline and commitment.

Course Objective: To give you a comprehensive understanding of Buddhist theory enabling you to develop an effective lifelong meditation practice.

What past students have said.

I am grateful to have taught these same modules to an in-person group at the Peterborough Yoga Wellness Center over the course of six weeks. Here is some of their feedback.

The Offer.

I am proud to be offering this course at $99.

This price is not just for one module. It is for lifetime access to the entire package of lectures, meditations, and readings.

I believe the practice of Buddhist meditation is vital to the flourishing of human beings and do not want price to be a hinderance for anyone. Once you sign up all of the course materials will be accessbile through a members-only portal on this website. You will create your own login and password. All of the readings can be downloaded and read offline.

Frequently Asked Questions.

When does this course start?
This is an online self-paced course - it starts whenever you’d like! However, I recommend that you only do one module per week to give yourself time to consolidate the theoretical and practical elements of the course.

What happens after I sign up?
You will immediately have access to the Member Portal, where you will see all the Modules.

How long do I have access to the content?
After enrolling, you have unlimited access to the course content. The notes are downloadable and the videos are viewable through your member portal.

What does a module consist of?
Each module contains a pre-recorded lecture, a pre-recorded guided meditation practice, and a link to a downloadable set of readings and notes.

How do I meditate?
The meditation techniques that we will be practicing in this course will be explained in detail in the weekly guided meditation videos. You don't need prior meditation experience.

How do I access the Discord community?
Once successfully signed up for the course, you will have access to an unmoderated Discord community. To access the community, you will need to sign up for Discord.

Can I access this content on a mobile device?
Yes. However, I highly recommend watching the lectures and meditations on a device with a large screen to help you engage with the content of this course with intention and focus.