meditation
Ideas for practice and teaching
meditation
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
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
Understanding that nothing is permanent will have us understand that this moment will never be again - there may be similar moments, there may be more beautiful or uglier moments, but this specific moment will never be again. When we know this, being present and seeing meaning even in the most mundane of things becomes very easy because every... See more
Naida • Ten Ways to Breathe Meaning into Existence
The space between stories is an invitation to sit with mystery and the uncertainty it holds.
Niels Devisscher • Belonging and Butterflies in Times of Breakdown
You’ll try as much as you need to try till you’re convinced that trying doesn't work. It's self-defeating, it prevents settling down, and that's going to make meditation tedious. Most people go through a certain amount of this. It's clearly recorded that the Buddha did, and that his enlightenment came when he finally stopped trying. You try for a
... See moreDean Sluyter • Natural Meditation
When presencing or resting in the nature of mind, mental events are said to effortlessly “self-liberate” and spontaneously dissolve on their own, no longer held in place through movements of attraction or aversion based on reification; this is described as the “method” of Dzogchen (Norbu, 2006)
Jeremy Axelrad • File
Recently, one of my private meditation students asked me, “What do you feel like when you meditate?” Right away I said, “Ordinary. Beautifully ordinary.”
Ordinary means that there is no need to add or take away from what is going on in the mind. Each portion of life has the whole of life. There is nothing wrong with what is in the mind except the sense that something is wrong. In this way simplicity turns to a form of compassion.
John Tarrant • Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life
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