Posts Tagged ‘meditation’
Strategies of Secular Buddhist Practice
As Ted Meissner and Mark Knickelbine have been emphasizing, practice is an essential part of any Secular Buddhist path. But it took me quite awhile to find my way to a really worthwhile practice. For many years I followed a Zen-based form of what I would term ‘free form’ meditation, oriented around samādhi, or focus…
Read MoreMeditating on the Mud Machine
Ordinarily we begin meditation by focusing on the body, in particular, the breath. This is known as “mindfulness of breathing” and we learn about it at the beginning of the Buddha’s sutta on the Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 10. I use the Ñaṇamoli/Bodhi translation). The Buddha suggests a few other body-oriented meditations,…
Read MoreBody Scan Guided Meditation
Guided Body Scan Meditation Follow this Guided Body Scan Meditation by Mark Knicklebine (about 40 minutes):
Read More20 Minute Sit
A guided 20-minute mindfulness meditation session featuring mindfulness of the breath and of the body, guided by Mark Knicklebine
Read MoreWhat is Metta?
With good will for the entire cosmos, Cultivate a limitless heart: Above, below, & all around, Unobstructed, without hostility or hate Whether standing, walking, Sitting, or lying down, As long as one is alert, One should be resolved on this mindfulness. This is called a sublime abiding, here and now. This is from Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s…
Read MoreEpisode 141 :: Shaila Catherine :: Focused and Fearless with the Jhanas
Shaila Catherine Meditation teacher Shaila Catherine speaks with us about jhana meditation and her book, Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm and Clarity. These days, it seems that there’s a great deal of attention to mindfulness meditation. And there’s nothing wrong with us spending time learning about and practicing…
Read MoreScenes from a Mindfulness Retreat: Ritual
Here are links to Part One and Part Two. One of the things I’ve admired about the Friday night drop in mindfulness sessions at the UW Health Integrative Medicine Center is the creativity displayed by the teachers in developing rituals, symbolic objects and activities that help to express the wisdom of practice. There is no…
Read MoreScenes from a Mindfulness Retreat: The Work
Part two of a four-part series. You can read the introduction here. One of the things I think those of you who have been on more traditional retreats would find most unusual about the mindfulness retreat is how interactive it was. There were no long periods of silent meditation, broken by occasional meals, dharma talks…
Read MoreEpisode 134 :: Andy Puddicombe :: Get Some Headspace
Andy Puddicombe Andy Puddicombe speaks with us about his site and new book, Get Some Headspace: How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life in Ten Minutes a Day. In what ways is Buddhist practice finding new forms in our contemporary society? What would a secular program of meditation look like, not just mindfulness, but also loving…
Read MoreStaying in the Body and Out of the Mind
We’ve all been there. An argument with a relative erupts, and on your drive home you relive the experience repeatedly, so when you arrive, you realize you weren’t aware of most of the drive. For the rest of the night, you replay that argument mentally, say the things you wish you’d thought of then, and…
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