Many difficult issues in life that create suffering and overwhelming when we experience them in a default, unconscious manner turn out to be more manageable and bearable when we pay close meditative attention to their component parts. We can understand that better using a metaphor of a giant purple ball suddenly showing up in our living rooms.
A big part of the “clarity” aspect of mindfulness is experiencing what we are aware of in higher detail. We can intentionally sensitize our awareness so that we notice more nuanced texture and specifics it any phenomena, seeing it in higher resolution and with greater granularity.
One framework for having a more free, easeful, and mindful experience of emotions is the “R.A.I.N. Method” – Recognition, Allowing, Interest, Non-Identification/Nurture.
A short post about what actions to take to stay awake if you are sleepy during a meditation period and want to remain alert – a topic I explored more thoroughly in a post in April 2021.
One activity that can be helpful to our meditation practice is to intentionally take time to appreciate ourselves for the time and effort that we are put in to it. Actively appreciating, celebrating, and admiring ourselves for our meditation practice can both positively boost our mood and foster consistency and depth in our practice.
When we feel body sensations – emotional or otherwise – all the way down to their bottom so that they are complete and done with, we may find that their energy has totally moved through, and nothing feels “stuck” or incomplete about them.
Choosing which technique to do is often an important part of navigating a meditation practice. Here are a few things to think about when deciding.
We can understand something about how to pick our meditation technique on a given day by imagining a parable of a flooded room.
A friend recently asked me how to reconcile meditation practice with making plans. One way is to use our thinking mind rather than have it use us, another is to stay aware of our breath as an anchor into the present moment, and another is to make a spiritual vow as to how we will act in the future.
Keeping our chin up when we meditate is a way to embody, affirm, and cultivate the intention that we will never let our difficult emotions and other challenges overwhelm us, and to plant our flag in the assertion that our spacious mindful awareness is always stronger than whatever may be assailing and trying to compress us.
Meditation and mindfulness can help us to be more aligned with our highest values in challenging situations.
Meditation on sound is a classic and popular technique that can be useful towards developing such meditative attributes as concentration and a deeper richness of perception. There are various objects that we can choose to focus our attention on when we do this practice – soothing audio recordings, naturalistic sounds, music, and some advanced choices too.
When we bring our attention to our body, we will notice that body sensations can emerge from various different sources.
People who have been meditating for a while may find value in “trigger practice”. This is when we voluntarily expose ourselves to a stimulus that usually activates a strong emotional, addictive, or painful response in us so that we can focus and meditate on that reaction.
One of the ways meditation can most help in our daily life is when we take small, regular, refreshing breaks from what we have been doing to sit, check in, and deeply listen to ourselves and the world around us.
Some people may be interested in exploring sitting cross-legged on a cushion, the way you might envision a shaved-head monk sitting. There are a few options for cross-legged meditation.
A central question that often comes up in many people’s lives is, “Should I trust and follow what my inner guidance, my impulses, and my instincts urge me to do, or should I instead do what I ‘should’, what the rules and my rational thinking mind tells me to do?” Mindfulness and meditation can help us with this question.
People sometimes ask me, “How long should I meditate for?” Given how much I love meditation practice, I am both joking and enthusiastically sincere when I answer, “As much as you can, of course!” We want, however, to be realistic in the amount of meditation that we intend to do each day. We want to…
I invite you to take on the practice of meditation equally when your mind is busy and chattering as when it is calm and clear.
Developing concentration and focus is a central goal of many meditation techniques. This post explores some of how we can best accomplish this.
Meditation often has a reputation for being peaceful bliss, but it can also bring up some unusual experiences as the body and mind are finally able to digest and process things that have been buried. Although they can sometimes be disconcerting, most of the time, such “symptoms” are normal, harmless, and fine.
A question that some beginner meditators have is, if I have a choice, what time of day should I meditate? The most common choice is first thing in the morning, but there are other options, and various factors to consider.
“What to do when we feel angry” is a question that many people have. Many people who approach meditation practice hope or imagine that doing so may help them with this dilemma. And, indeed, thankfully, it can.
Meditation is, unfortunately, sometimes boring. Meditating while bored, however, can often increase our power of concentration, and provide other benefits as well.
I wrote an article for the Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) website, an introduction to meditation for ADHD people. I am reposting the article here too. I discuss three useful techniques, some overview ways of understanding meditation practice, and some tips for getting started.
Mindful, meditative eating is a powerful practice popular with both ancient monks and modern Americans, and consists of bringing focus, attention, and presence to the process of eating.
There are various ways that meditation practice can help us to have fewer addictive urges, and to resist them when they do arise.
A two minute read on the topic of, what to do if I have meditated and found it valuable, and have some sort of sense that, “I’d like to have it be more a part of my life”, but aren’t doing much of it.
One helpful and precise way to define the word “mindfulness” is as consisting of three core elements: Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity.
In two minutes, here are basic tips for creating a healthy meditation posture.
Meditation may or may not seem to correlate with us being noticeably more happy on a given day, depending on what process our mind is going through. The growth in positive mental states that we get from regularly meditating slowly rises over the years, however.
Practicing being mindful when interacting with other people can be among the most positively transformational practice that we can do.
When we practice meditation, we want to sit as still possible. Generally, the more our body settles down, the more our mind will settle down.
One way of understanding how meditation can help us to be happier is by imagining waking up in a cabin on a ship.
Walking is a popular posture for meditating, either as something that we can give our full attention to and do intentionally as a formal practice, or when walking functionally, while we are on our way to a destination.
Aging is an emotionally challenging experience for most people at least at times, and is sometimes one of the most difficult. Mindfulness meditation, thankfully, is a friend that can help create more ease with the process.
You may be someone who feels ready to devote more formal dedicated time to meditation practice and set up a home practice. If so, here are some brief tips for you in doing so.
A few thoughts on the interface of spirituality and psychoactive chemicals: the value that they can have, some of the dangers, and some tips for how to make psychedelic explorations be useful and safe.
This post is mostly about what actions to take to stay awake if you are sleepy during a meditation period and want to remain alert. It also briefly explores the question as to whether it is advisable to sleep during meditation periods, from both sides of the debate.
I just finished a weeklong “virtual” home retreat. It was the first time that I had done an extended structured group home retreat like that. Going into it, I was concerned about the power that it might lack relative to a cloistered residential retreat. I ended up though being pleasantly surprised at the power that this retreat had.
Last weekend, I ran a 10k race. It was my first race at that distance in maybe 25 years. I had a good showing, and I think that that came in part because I was doing a concentration meditative technique during the whole race, which I think helped free, unify, and integrate my body’s energy.
I sometimes prefer to speak in a way that is unusual and clunky, but that feels to me like it embodies more mindfulness, presence, freedom, spaciousness, openness, groundedness, and invitation – ways of speech that are more “meditative”.
This post has suggestions for taking a healthy, comfortable posture when meditating in a chair.
Not only is “mindfulness” a popular trend that’s sweeping the nation, but “mindfulness in the workplace” specifically is too. This post will give you some suggestions for helpful techniques for staying spacious and open when working an office job.
I sometimes ponder famous religious and spiritual figures are or are not actually in a state of enlightenment – bodhi, moksha, satori, the end goal of some religions – and sometimes discuss the topic with others. I have some assessments.
An article in the New York Times alleges that mindfulness in the workplace decreases motivation and therefore is something employers should discourage. I disagree in several ways.
A choice that meditators sometimes encounter is whether to practice sitting with our eyes open or closed. I recommend changing it up – sometimes meditating with eyes open and at other times closed – depending on what works best for the situation.
“Circling” is a powerfully liberating and connecting authentic relating practice that has been exponentially growing in popularity, worldwide. As circling has reached wider, people have gotten interested in its roots and history. As a part of an epic Facebook discussion thread on the subject, I wrote a post to clarify my memories of the beginning days of Circling and its evolution since then. I especially focused my writings on the early relationships between some of the major founding figures.
A friend asked me about how to use meditation to avoid feeling physical pain. I replied that, yes, classically, there are mindfulness techniques that help us to turn away from and avoid pain, but usually these are just preliminaries to turning towards and fully feeling the pain.
This post us about how Burning Man seems different to me than it used to fifteen years ago. I wrote it with my friends who used to go to Burning Man back then but have not been back since in mind, although I imagine it is of interest to other people too.
I think that most people who pick up spiritual practice are looking for more peace and stillness; we want our movements, thinking, and speaking to be easeful, unforced, non-compulsive, and perhaps even almost effortless. A common image in Zen poetry is of bamboo swaying in the wind. One explanation for this is that bamboo swaying in the wind moves – but it moves in an unforced and easy way.
One way to understand meditation practice is to see it as similar to the habit of physical exercise and working out, which is something that more people are more familiar with and able to understand.
To me, “The Meaning of Prince” was that I saw him as an unexcelled paragon of the courage of letting his artistic soul shine the way it wanted and needed to, of being who he authentically truly was, of following his inner guide, regardless of what was the safe, acceptable, or practical thing to do.
Even though I get it that there are no objects in this world, only events, I’m still shocked some times when people that simply seem like guiding stars, like point of reference and orientation, turn out to be impermanent mammals as much as the rest of us.
We can get liberated with any sensation: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, subtle or strong, dynamic or static, mental, physical, or of the external senses. The point is how we relate to the sensation.
For most of my life, I’ve felt that a wedding ceremony should be a reflection of the fact that two people are basically “as good as married” already, and that a healthy commitment grows out of already existing intimacy and trust. But lately I’ve noticed that at least a few couples that I watched get married within two months of meeting each other, and that I doubted would last long, are still going strong years later. Sometimes, it seems, commitment creates intimacy and trust.
Some people seem to think that large-scale organized spectator sports needlessly create competitiveness, violence, and aggression, and that they are a waste of money, energy, and attention that could be better spent on “real” life. But large-scale organized spectator sports are vastly cheaper and healthier than the alternative ways that people act out their territorial aggressions.
I once heard someone say that, “Psychotherapy is about the past, life coaching is about the future, and spiritual work is about the present moment”.
I felt a power to that model when I first heard it. In the years since, I’ve often thought about and examined it. This is what I think.
Years ago, there was a study done about mystics, saints, and great spiritual teachers throughout history. The researchers read the writings and went over their teachings of these folks, and found that there seemed to be a nested hierarchy of mystical and spiritual experiences
Isn’t all coaching supposed to be mindful? What’s unique about coaching via mindfulness-informed sensibilities? How does appreciating and having a personal relationship with mindfulness affect coaching work? What’s your experience with coaching, mindfulness, and mindful coaching?
A hard truth is when one person is unusually authentic and honest in giving another person feedback, in the form of giving a challenge, penetrating them with a different perspective that they may or may not enjoy hearing, and suggesting difficult changes that the speaker feels may help listener to be more mature, happy, and healthy.
People sometimes ask me my opinion of Transcendental Meditation. This is what I have to say about it:
I’ve recently been having great results in being productive by using the pomodoro technique. The basic idea is to work for twenty-five minutes, then take a break for five minutes, and then repeat.
In 2009 I spent a couple weeks at the Wat Pahnnanna Chat monastery, in the austere and celibate Thai Forest Tradition. Most of the long-term monks seemed distant, unavailable for conversation, and even emotionally cold. I had friendly chats with one guy, though, an old Sri Lankan monk, who had kind eyes and always seemed warm and open. One morning we had the following exchange:
We can recognize a deeply effective mindfulness technique by noticing that it usually has three aspects to it: concentrating the mind, providing deep sensory richness, and cultivating a calm, steady, equanimous mind.
As we know, our modern electronic internet/social networking/cell phone culture is stimulating, entertaining, and short-attention-span-ish, but accomplishments that fulfill us the most take patience, focus, and a long attention span. A quote that I just saw and like, from “The Organized Mind” by Daniel Levitin : “As already noted, the Internet has helped some of…
For many people establishing a meditation practice, buying a sitting cushion of one’s own is a big moment. Many people find that there is something special about having their own cushion…
I think of my car as an object. But the cars that I’ve owned and driven around in the past are no more – I think now that the steel, fiberglass, plastic, aluminum, etc molecules that made up their parts are scattered all over the planet.
‘What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?’ You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or the past that afflicts you, but always the present…
What is real to us when we are in dreamless sleep? What is a dream made out of, and where does a dream happen? If “God” does not exist, then what is “God” made out of? Nothing, a void.
The technique that I have found most useful for meditation while driving is to simply be present and focused on the sense impressions of the act of driving – to see what is going on around us, to keep our ears open for the sounds of traffic, and to be aware of the bodily feeling of sitting in a car seat holding a steering wheel. We can developing an all-round awareness of what is to our sides and behind us as well as in front, inside our cars and outside, repeatedly releasing wandering thoughts so as to bring ourselves back to the richness of the present moment.
I just finished reading the book “Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing“, which was written anonymously under the pen name “Jed McKenna”. I had heard about this book for years, but had formed mostly negative impression based on the words and actions of those who said that they had read it. Several friends who I trust…
There are five domains of social experience that your brain treats the same as survival issues: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness,
In this post I will describe two writing practices that I have found helpful in quitting addictions. I recommend them for working with any behavior that you have attachment to, that has major negative consequences, and that at least part of you would like to quit.
One way to make a big impact on our life for the better is instantaneous, emotional, intense, and invokes making a courageous and bold big change. The other is slow, steady, regular time put in moving towards a goal
I’ve noticed that it feels unmistakably more fun and satisfying to challenge myself, to get out and go climbing, to get on some routes that are edgy and difficult for me, and then to be skillful, brave, and persevering, and do what it takes to get all the way to the top. This is, of course, similar to many other areas of life: we don’t have to take on challenges, and we don’t have to succeed at them – but it sure does seem to feel better to win than not to play.
I’ve heard it said that many of the attitudes that spiritual seekers take towards the path of growth can be grouped in two ways. One is to say that all is perfect as it is, and that all we need to do is relax and realize this inherent perfection.
Many of us with a desire to be truly emotionally close with other people eventually come to the conclusion that interpersonal relating can either be under control, safe, and artificial, or it can be raw, real, and genuine. A corollary of this is that there is no way around the anxiety that comes from being truly close with people – being intimate involves making space for a certain amount of anxiety without trying to manage it or make it go away.
I imagine that most people would agree that it is often difficult to find appropriate words of condolence when a friend is grieving. I personally do not want to say to a grieving friend that I hope that they feel better soon, because I think that it is healthy for a human psyche to go through a period of pain when it has lost someone or something that it cares about. I believe that people often say “feel better soon” because they are uncomfortable in the presence of another person’s pain, and that that phrase can sometimes feel like an unpleasant pressure put on a grieving person to have it all put back together sooner than would be otherwise natural for them.
One question that sometimes comes up for people who are learning how to meditate is whether it is a good idea to meditate in the period between climbing into bed and actually drifting off to sleep.
Fifteen years ago, I felt unsettled after reading a transcription of a talk given by one of my Zen teachers, Tenshin Reb Anderson. The piece was entitled “A Ceremony for the Encouragement of Zazen”.
I felt fine about Tenshin Roshi expressing the common Zen teaching that full liberation (and “oneness with the universe”) is not something that we can simply capture or do through our own intentions or efforts, but that we can align with our true place in the cosmos by sitting meditation (called “zazen” in Japanese Zen). What this piece said that I had not heard before, and disliked reading, was the idea that the true meaning of meditation is only realized within the context of a “ceremony”.
I spent five years in the nineties as part of research teams studying how to improve drug and alcohol treatment. My job was to manage and clean the data, and to do statistical analysis
In my first job after university, I worked on a team that examined “proximal outcomes” for recovery, both for twelve step programs and cognitive behavioral therapy. The idea was, each modality of treatment program suggests various activities for people to do if they want to get sober – but which of these many activities are actually most effective in helping people to stay clean?
A traditional teaching in the Buddhist lineage is that the best times of day to engage in formal, still meditative practice is first thing in the morning, upon waking up from sleep and before the day gets going, or right before sleeping, as the challenges of another day on Earth wind down and slip away. I personally feel best about the practice of meditating first thing in the morning
A friend emailed me yesterday, and asked “If the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (which holds that the self is an illusion) is true, who is it that is accumulating karma? I’m genuinely puzzled by this, especially as it pertains to the concept of re-incarnation and the Atman (two seemingly incongruent concepts to anatta).”
My friend was asking about karma, which is the idea that we are the inheritors of the results of our actions – in other words, the idea that what we sow, we reap. A common example of karma: if we eat healthily, exercise, and get enough sleep, we will probably be relatively physically healthy, and, if we don’t, we won’t. Simple enough.]
The most mature spiritual paths are those with that balance between a simultaneous rising up towards the one and sinking down into the many; this means realizing that the imminent and the transcendent are both Divine
A friend of mine posted on Facebook a graphic making fun of religious notions of morality as “handed down from God”. I responded: I think a lot of atheistic objections to religion are a reaction to a simple-minded concept of the Divine. Yes, many people do indeed think of Divinity as an all-powerful Man with a White Beard who has a bunch of rules, a bunch of demands, and a quick temper. But that vision does not fit with the more sublime and subtle Divinity that, for example, the deep spiritual mystics and sages throughout the millennia have talked about experiencing.
The California Vipassana Center (more formally known as ” Dhamma Mahavana”, or “Great Forest of Buddhist Teachings”) is a large meditation center in the wooded near Fresno, in central California. It is the place where I did my first intensive meditation retreat (in 1994), and I have sat two more there since then (in 1996 and 2003). The CVC is also the place where many of my friends have done their first (and only) meditation retreats. “To do a Vipassana” is a phrase that I hear fairly often, and it means to do a ten-day retreat at the CVC, or one of it’s affiliated meditation centers.
Here is an brilliant excerpt from a talk by master meditation teacher Shinzen Young, discussing a difference between psychotherapy (where we completely deal with one memory percolating up from the subconscious at a time) and insight meditation (where we slowly bring awareness and openness to the whole mind, conscious and subconscious)