meditation
Ideas for practice and teaching
meditation
When we meditate for a purpose—to be calm, to gain insight—we are striving, not meditating. If we spend our time assessing how we are doing, we are defending ourselves against the intimacy of life, not letting it get hold of us.
John Tarrant • John Tarrant : Articles
Practice is not about overcoming human problems. It’s not about becoming serene and transcendent. It’s about embracing our lives as they really are, and understanding at every point how deep and profound and gorgeous everything is—even the suffering, even the difficulty. So we forgive ourselves for our limitations, and we forgive this world for its
... See moreMeditation is not about manufacturing a state of mind that’s clear, calm or full of insight. It’s about interfering less and less with what is actually here.
John Tarrant • John Tarrant : Articles
It is as if we lived in a world where only diamonds could be used to put out a fire. In this alternate universe, fires are easy to start and break out everywhere, but water, which is as common there as here, won’t put them out. Only diamonds, which are just as rare as on Earth, will put out a fire. Only a very few unique individuals are capable of
... See moreBarry Magid • Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide
I started to meditate in a different way. I let go of the idea of what meditation was supposed to be. So I would sit down and let my experience simply be, in a very deep way. I started to let go of trying to control my experience. That became the beginning of discovering for myself what True Meditation is. From that point on, that shift - moving... See more
I guess I meditate because attention is my art form. I’d even wager that much of what we call art — paintings, novels, poetry — are secondary, byproducts of rarefied attention. Attention, then is the primary art form.
Why I Meditate
Again, Dzogchen posits that the state beyond suffering is not something apart from us to be attained, but rather the enduring condition of our own being, obscured by investment in the subject-object mode of perception and the resultant attempts to manipulate experience. As an expression of this view, its contemplative practices emphasize
... See moreYou can do this now by focusing on the feeling that there is much more to life than you understand.
Tim Freke • How Long Is Now?
nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know…nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as... See more