Articles
11/26 Practice Circle: Silent Illumination, Sitting with a Question
One powerful way to access the wisdom of the whole bodymind is to sit until the mind becomes still, and then to drop a question into that stillness and pay attention to what arises. When Practice Circle gathers again this Sunday, Nov. 26, at 6 pm Pacific, 8 Central, and 9 Eastern, we’ll pursue this…
Read MorePractice Circle: Trust Emergence
When Practice Circle meets again this Sunday, 7/12/20, at 8 pm Central, we’ll work with a practice called Insight Dialogue. To prepare, I thought I’d share this essay we originally published in 2015. At Practice Circle, we’ll be working with an interactive mindfulness practice developed by Gregory Kramer called Insight Dialogue. In this practice, we…
Read MorePractice Circle Live: The Benefactor Body Scan
This guided meditation was recorded live at the SBA Practice Circle on October 22, 2017. If you’d like to learn more about why we developed this practice, and how you can join us at Practice Circle, you can read about it here. Transcription I’m Mark Knickelbine from the Secular Buddhist Association, and this is the…
Read MorePractice Circle: The Benefactor Body Scan
Recently, SBA Community Director Jennifer Hawkins engaged us with folks from the North American Buddhist Alliance to talk about the body scan, a practice used widely in both Buddhist meditation and mindfulness programs. If you’re not familiar with it, it consists of systematically directing your concentrated awareness to one body part at a time, starting…
Read MoreMy First Retreat – Part 3
This is Part 3 of a series of 3 articles. For Part 1: https://secularbuddhism.org/2017/10/12/my-first-retreat-part-1-of-3-a-zen-sesshin-at-rocky-mountain-ecodharma/ For Part 2: https://secularbuddhism.org/2017/10/12/my-first-retreat-part-2-of-3/ …continued: Morning 3: This was the last day, a short day. And in everything, I “relaxed”… in a “bad way.” I think that one factor was a personal or internal one: all of the praise I got during Dokusan…
Read MoreMy First Retreat (Part 2 of 3)
This is Part 2 of a series of 3 articles. For Part 1: https://secularbuddhism.org/2017/10/12/my-first-retreat-part-1-of-3-a-zen-sesshin-at-rocky-mountain-ecodharma/ …continued: Day 2: We woke up at 5AM (successfully!), chanted, and sat (zazen). I couldn’t tell you much about what came up during that specific sit, but I do recall that most other retreat attendees took full advantage of any breaks to…
Read MoreMy First Retreat (Part 1 of 3) – a Zen sesshin at Rocky Mountain EcoDharma
What do you call it when the food at the retreat doesn’t agree with you? 30 minutes of sh*tting meditation J/k lol, everyone. This joke (which has probably been thought of before) occurred to me during one of the breaks. I was resting in my room, and I overheard a woman whispering a remark to…
Read MorePractice Circle: Mindfulness of Sound
Stop what you’re doing right now, and just listen. Were you surprised by all you heard? Before you stopped to listen, you may have been completely unaware of all of the sounds going on. As soon as you directed your attention to them, there they were, loud and soft, far and near, pleasant, unpleasant and…
Read MoreSecular Buddhism: Divisive Criticism Instead of Collaborative Dialogue Once Again
Many years ago I took lifetime precepts at Bhavana Society under Bhante Gunaratana, and have renewed them several times. One in particular is challenging me lately: Pisunavacha veramani sikkahapadam samadiyami. I take the precept to abstain from divisive speech. It’s with a heavy heart that I continue to stumble in this, especially in response to…
Read MorePractice Circle: Autumn and Impermanance
We’ve crossed the Equinox, and here in the northern USA where I live, the arrival of autumn is unmistakable. Green leaves dry and are touched with orange, red and gold. The evening turns cool and dark. Soon the lush profusion of life will give way to the barren cold of winter. It’s a very good…
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