Posts Tagged ‘mindfulness’
Practicing with Technology
We recently did a survey among people who had signed up for Practice Circle to find out their most and least favorite things about our online mindfulness group. The likes were all over the map, but thankfully they were many: respondents rated Practice Circle 7.3 on a 10 point scale, with only 3 of 19 ranking…
Read MorePracticing Non-Self II — Six Elements Meditation
This is the second of three articles on applying the principle of anatta, non-self, to our dharma practice. The articles support the next few sessions of the SBA Practice Circle, which meets via online video conferencing at 8 pm Central on the second and fourth Sundays of each month. If you’d like to come experience…
Read MoreSitting with Dukkha
Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha. (Saṃyutta Nikāya 56.11) I sat down on my cushion for my most…
Read MorePractice: The Four Strivings
When we practice, we strive to become proficient. The Sanskrit term for meditation, “bhāvana”, actually means “development” or “cultivation”, near synonyms for “practice” itself. Indeed, meditation is central to the Buddhist path: to meditate is to develop wholesome mental states through mindfulness and concentration. In the Cūḷavedalla Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 44.12), the lay follower Visākha…
Read MorePractice: Working with the Hindrances
The first and biggest problems we all have in meditative practice are those constant bothers that the Buddha termed “hindrances”, clouding the clear water of awareness. He counted five, usually translated: sensual desire, ill-will, restlessness, sloth-and-torpor, and doubt. When I first heard these, I wondered, why these five? They sound like a miscellaneous grab-bag of…
Read MoreStrategies 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 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 MoreScenes from a Mindfulness Retreat: Experience
This is the final installment of four. Here are links to the first, second, and third part. It was 6 a.m. on the first morning of the retreat, and after a restless night’s sleep I was sitting on a wooden bench before a still farm pond, examining again my intention for being there. For several…
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 More