Category: Meditation
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Mantra power from Sweden
I was just remembering a scene from Ram Das’ Be Here Now. I don’t know if I’ve remembered it correctly since I haven’t read the book in over 20 years. I think most people who quote the title of that book as if it were a prescription for living haven’t read it… but that’s besides…
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I’m not leaving, but I am moving… ish
Just a quick announcement: I’ve launched an additional blog at http://www.MeditationTruth.com Some of you may know that I had a 30+ year meditation practice that I gave up cold turkey one day (the story of why is at http://www.meditationtruth.com/a-modern-look-at-meditation-how-to-meditate-and-meditating-science/) and then ended up developing the Instant Advanced Meditation Course. Well, to add a bit of…
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Who you are really… AS IF!
Life is like a bowl of cherries. NOT. I just walked outside and life was in no way like a bowl of cherries. In fact, it was so unlike a bowl of cherries I can’t even list the differences between life and a bowl of cherries. All the world’s a stage… Ummm… not really. As…
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The Integration of Bowling and Life
I loved bowling when I was a kid. If I couldn’t get a ride to the lanes from my parents, or the mom of a sometimes-friend (the time being “when I wanted to go bowling”), I would walk the 5 miles to the alley. And if I didn’t have any money, I’d pick up trash…
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Absolutely Relative
In many “spiritual” circles, they refer to two kinds of “truth”: Relative and Absolute. Relative Truth is what we know and experience on a daily basis. There’s a you, there’s a me, we’re separate individuals. Events transpire over time. As the Zen boys would say, “Mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.” Absolute Truth on…
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The Great and Powerful Allower
I was given a popular meditation book recently. Aside from the confusing fact that the cover blurb said, “The most American form of meditation,” yet the book taught basic Buddhist meditation practices, I was struck by the fundamental teaching: Whatever arises, simply allow it to be. Sounds like a great prescription for living, doesn’t it?…
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Accepting Things As They Aren’t
My friend Robert Hover was one of the first westerners authorized to teach Buddhist meditation. This was about 45 years ago. As part of Robert’s training with his teacher, U Ba Khin, he developed a particular way of attending to painful or unpleasant sensations that not only led to the discomfort disappearing but also resulted…
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The little experiment that could
I have a friend who meditates for a living. Yup. Gets paid to sit on his butt. He’s living in Fairfield, Iowa, the US home of TM (Trancendental Meditation). Apparenly, some gajillionaire (I think he actually has gajillion dollar bills!) believes that if enough TM people meditate (long, hard, with feeling, without feeling… something) enough,…
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The Buddha Su-u-u-cks
My favorite thing about the title of this blog post is that it might get some people a bit hot under the meditation cushion, but it’s not too likely to get my website firebombed. However, had I replaced Buddha with Jesus or Mohammed… well, that could lead to a whole different set of consequences. And…
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You can be the next Tiger Woods, guaranteed!
WARNING: This will be an unusually short post for me 😉 I already talked about this particular issue, so I don’t need to rehash it. But I ran across the PERFECT example of it, so I had to bring it up again. So… There’s a new movie called Milarepa: Magician, Murderer, Saint directed by a…
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“It’s all an illusion”… is all an illusion!
“It’s all an illusion.” “Nothing has ever happened to nobody.” “Everything is just the play of consciousness.” Sounds cool, yeah? Core, essential, pithy truths, right? Sure, if you nod your head and believe everything you hear just because it feels good. You may have statements like these on your fridge or on posters on the…
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Back away from the enlightened guy… nothing to see here
In January of ’06, my wife and and were in Mumbai, India (as if there’s another Mumbai you would confuse it with. “Does he mean Mumbai, Kentucky?”) for a friend’s wedding. And, btw, if you ever hava a chance to go to India I can’t recommend enough going for a wedding put on by a…
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Last Meditator Standing… or Survivor, Tibet
No, I’m not proposing a new reality show where we put 10 meditators in a room, issue concentration challenges to them, and see who America votes for as the best meditator (though, now that I write it… nah, never mind). What I want to talk about today is the problem with monks and meditators. Not…
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A Reason-able project?
I don’t make an effort, but when I see Bill Moyers’ show, Faith and Reason, on my Tivo, I’ll watch it. I spent so many years listening to spiritual teachers and, well, old habits are hard to break. So far, I haven’t been able to make it through an episode. I hear a lot about…
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The day I stopped nodding my head
I hopped in a car to ride down the spiritual path at the age of 7. By 10 I was comparing notes with 63 year old physicians on the clinical application of hypnosis for anaesthesia and pain relief. And off it went from there… biofeedback, Vedanta, Shaivism, Tai Chi, Aikido, Taoism, Vipassana, Zen and Tibetan…