Dear Reader,

Hi. It’s Sunday, August 2nd 2026 at 7:34am. I’m up earlier than usual honestly.

One hour from now I’m taking an online meditation class with my teachers, where they’ll review Stages 1-4 of Kamalashila’s Nine Stages of Meditation.

They also taught a similar review class yesterday, and to my absolute surprise and dismay, I slept through class. I was actually really sad about that.

Despite being sure I did, I must have just not set my alarm properly.

That’s okay; it ended up being a sweet day, as I wrote about yesterday, and I did an excellent job of not beating myself up.

In our lineage, not beating ourselves is huge. A huge part of our practice is fixating the mind on what we did well instead of ruminating about what we did poorly. (See Coffee Meditation, for example)

This is actually mirrored in the wisdom of Stage Two of meditation practice, which is classified by the mind being more off the object than on the object.

While we might have a tendency to judge ourselves or beat ourselves up for “not meditating well”, that tendency actually doesn’t help us progress in our meditation practice—at all.

The wisdom of Stage Two passed down from Master Kamalashila is to joyfully return to the object (often the breath) whenever we happen to spontaneously catch ourselves in mind wandering.

We don’t judge. We don’t criticize. We just joyfully return, and start again with a firm (but always joyous and relaxed) resolve to keep the mind on the object for as long as possible.

Even if we have to joyfully return a ton of times throughout our practice—that’s okay. That’s our training.

Eventually, this positive reinforcement trains the mind to stay on the object for longer periods, and we’ll eventually reach Stage Three (where the mind is more on than off the object) or even Stage Four (where the mind never completely leaves the object).

Not only is joyfully returning a more effective practice than beating ourselves up for not doing well… it also makes the practice, well… joyful! 🙂 Seriously! Mastering the joyful return makes meditation practice a lot more fun. And that’s a good thing, because part of what we’re doing when we meditate is training ourselves to be happy.

And the really cool thing about the wisdom of the joyful return is it can be applied to anything—like sleeping through a meditation class.

No self-judgment, no rumination. No need to spin up a giant story out of a momentary lapse. Just a quick moment of intelligent regret and making a commitment not to do it again next time (we can talk about the Four R’s of Purification in a future letter, too)—and then joyfully return, and just get right back to it with a pure and happy heart.

(How much better does that sound then spinning a story that “the day is ruined” and wallowing in self-pity for the rest of the day, I mean c’mon!?)

I haven’t signed up or put everything in my calendar yet, but the real course that my teachers are offering focuses specifically on Stages 5-9 and starts in the coming weeks.

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This is the second letter I’m writing on my blog’s new home, WordPress, and it feels good.

I just appreciate the privacy and simplicity right now.

Substack is super noisy and has a lot of bells and whistles. It definitely works for capturing attention, converting subscribers, and promoting stuff. I just feel like I’m doing something a bit… quieter here.

Last night, I asked Miranda to subscribe, and I actually went ahead and removed her as a subscriber this morning. She can resubscribe whenever she wants to, but it won’t be because I told her to.

I like the idea of people naturally finding this when they find it, and subscribing completely on their own free will.

I like the idea of publishing this letter and nobody seeing it for now, besides the people who are meant to, the people who somehow stumble across it.

Looking forward to catching up more soon.

XO,
GP.