meditation
Ideas for practice and teaching
meditation
Over and over again we will have to do this. We will forget. Farther down the path, tomorrow, or perhaps later today, we will forget about stillness. And when we do, we will have lost the thread. Without this central practice, none of it will make any sense.
Stephen Cope • The Wisdom of Yoga
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
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
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 moreImagine that you're passing a lazy afternoon at a sidewalk café on a mild spring day, sipping your drink, chatting with a couple of friends, and watching the cars go by. That's easy. In fact, it's effort-less: the cars just go wherever they go, and you're happily unem-ployed. But now suppose that for some reason you suddenly fall under the delusion
... See moreDean Sluyter • Natural Meditation
Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW...so you stop asking.
Ram Dass • Be Here Now
I am also slowly learning that being present is not just about giving my full attention to whatever is happening right now. It is also about recognising that what I have is good, and then wanting what I have.
When we say to ourselves, “This feels bad. I need a way to fix this!” that’s the very moment when the most growth and promise lies at our fingertips. But in order to access it, we have to do the opposite of what we want to do. We have to resist the urge to analyze or find a solution or protect ourselves from our emotions.
We have to stop and feel... See more
We have to stop and feel... See more
Heather Havrilesky • Tolerating Unknowns Will Make You Stronger
“It’s against this background of seeking satisfaction amidst ceaseless change, that you can see how radical an act of meditation actually is—meditation is the act of calling off the search, it is the art of doing nothing.” – Sam Harris