meditation

Ideas for practice and teaching

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

“... This aliveness is always here. We don’t have to work to get it. It is ever-present. Seeking enlightenment is a form of postponement, postponing what can only be realized now ...” ~ Joan Tollifson

Joan Tollifson • Can We Embrace "Yes Buts?" Painting The Sidewalk Joan Tollifson - Stillness Speaks

But, meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.

Jon Kabat-Zinn • Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

The lesson here, which you can actually apply to anything that happens in meditation, is: Just say "Hmmm." There's a scene in The Big Sleep where Humphrey Bogart, as the detective Philip Marlowe, is considering a clue. Tugging at his earlobe, he says, "Hmmm." When Lauren Bacall asks him, "What does 'Hmmm'

mean?," Bogey replies, "It means, 'Hmmm."

Tha

Dean 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

“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

Tim Ferriss • #599: New Insights from Sam Harris, Dr. Peter Attia, Ramit Sethi, and Elizabeth Gilbert | The Tim Ferriss Show • Podcast Notes

We so routinely look outside of ourselves for answers that when we turn to look within, it can feel foreign. It can feel challenging, confusing, scary, and painful.

Anne Berube • The Burnout Antidote

Here are some rules of thumb that might help you navigate whatever practice you are trying out.

Criticizing, judging, or assessing yourself isn’t virtue. It doesn’t help in meditation; it’s just more noise. And if you are criticizing, judging, or assessing yourself, don’t criticize that, and so on, until you wear out and compassion enters.

Criticizin

John Tarrant • John Tarrant : Articles

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