Uncategorized

Have you ever found yourself in a yoga or meditation class, listening (while you can) to the soporific voice of the teacher waffle on and on about the spiritual merits of ‘letting go.’ The injunction, “Just let go!” ranks high amongst the reigning spiritual cliches. An inner-voice might pugnaciously rebel: “Hello no! I’m clearly a […]

This week, we come to the third of the stabilizing factors of mind: Equanimity. Ajahn Thanissaro employs a useful analogy for this factor of mind: “There’s a passage in the Canon where the Buddha’s teaching Rahula how to meditate, and he starts out by telling him to meditate with a mind like earth. When people spit […]

On this beautiful Fall afternoon in New England, I wish to share with you some reflections on the Sixth Factor of Awakening: Tranquility (Passaddhi). In general, I would hazard to guess that most students of yoga or meditation arrive at the threshold of the spiritual life with a strong desire for an increased dosage of calm […]

From single-pointed concentration (ekaggata samadhi) to moment-to-moment concentration (khanika samadhi). Once the mind gets reasonablyestablished on the breath, it’s important to shift the focus to include all aspects of the present moment, not just the breath. I say reasonably because this is a rather arbitrary moment in practice — the moment when one feels, “Yes, the mind is […]

Over the last several weeks, we’ve been exploring the energizing factors of awakening: energy, investigation and rapture. We will now turn our attention to the stabilizing factors, which help balance the mind. Samadhi. Concentration, or samadhi in Pali, is the first of these stabilizing factors. And there are two types of samadhi that we will be exploring:ekaggata samadhi (single-pointed concentration) and khanika samadhi(moment […]

The pleasure of gratitude. This week, we’ll conclude our short investigation ofpiti or rapture. A while back in my practice, I started to notice a curious connection that would occur in meditation whenever I consciously included a few minutes of reflection on the various things I was grateful for. The result was that quite often I would immediately […]

In this week’s installment of Minute of Mindfulness, I’ll be returning to the theme of rapture or pleasure in practice. And we’ll be looking at how our perception of the breath serves as a powerful agent in our experience of the breath. In other words, we’ll be experimenting with how our thoughts about the breath shape our sensory experience of […]

EMERGENCY WARNING: This week, I will interrupt our regularly scheduled theme, The Seven Factors of Awakening, and take a cue from nature to address storms, both meteorological and psychological. As I type, Hurricane Irene is wending her way up the eastern coast of the United States, threatening high winds, lashing rains, flooding and power outages. Whether […]

I received a lot of positive feedback from last week’s post. Readers expressed enthusiasm about exploring the pleasant side of practice. This week, I wanted to introduce some practical ideas for how one might incline one’s practice towards the pleasant and, ultimately, towards the euphoric states of rapture. But, before I mention these practice tips, […]

From time to time, meditators and yoga practitioners will experience deep and gratifying states of bliss. The body might dissolve into light, effervescent bubbles of sensation. The mind might feel bright and free from all burden. And there might even be a gentle whisper of a thought… “This is it… any moment now… wait for […]

This week, we turn to the intention behind Investigation. Often, either in our yoga or meditation practice, we can get into routinized patterns. We’ve done it before. We’ve done sun salutions. We’ve watched the breath. We’ve seen the mind get lost in wandering. And the more familiar we become with the landscape of practice, the more […]

At 7:23 am, with the temperature already in the mid-80’s and humidity over 70%, I can think of no better teaching than this one from Larry Rosenberg, the meditation master of Cambridge, Ma. Larry is a guiding teacher at theCambridge Insight Meditation Center, and he’s known for his salty, down-to-earth wisdom. This priceless teaching appeared in […]

In the late afternoons on a recent retreat with Ajahn Sucitto, students were able to sit casually around a table, with tea in hand, and ask Ajahn questions relevant to practice and life. On one such occasion, after a day of developing samadhi with respect to breath awareness, one student asked: “Ajahn (which means teacher), I’m […]

Years ago, I worked intimately with a very strict Burmese meditation master, Sayadaw U Pandita. At every interview, Sayadaw would either exhort me to “try harder” or “maintain the effort that I was applying.” For him, enlightenment was the inevitable result of a ‘job’ well done. If you weren’t awake, you simply hadn’t finished the […]

This week, we’ll begin a look at the second Factor of Awakening: Energy or Effort (Virya). In some respects, developing a skillful relationship to the energy and effort that goes into practice is vitally important if we are to make any realistic progress along the path. At times it’s important to know when to apply more […]

This week, we’ll be looking at the first Factor of Awakening: Mindfulness (sati).  As the namesake of this newsletter, ‘mindfulness’ is a theme that gets regular review and attention. In many respects, mindfulness is the foundational capacity that both steers and fuels the course of our spiritual lives. Without it, we wander (or skid) aimlessly from […]

I’ve had a very full spring, and I apologize for my lapse in keeping in touch. With two teacher trainings on the schedule, a retreat in Vermont and a trip to Ireland, I’ve found it challenging to get to the computer. But no matter, I’m back in Boston now, with a spacious schedule ahead, and […]

The Buddha described seven faculties of mind that, when brought to a sufficient degree of maturity, lead one to an experience of unconditioned freedom. These faculties are referred to as the Seven Factors of Enlightenment: Concentration, Tranquility, Equanimity, Investigation, Energy, Rapture and Mindfulness. We’ll look at these more in coming weeks. But… As sacrilegious as […]

I’ve been having a fantastic time teaching Yin Yoga workshops in Luxembourg and Munich. Tonight, I will wrap up the final leg of this trip with an Yin intensive in Zürich. Throughout these workshops, I’ve been addressing a theme that I think is becoming increasingly relevant:how we engage with our practice. Are we practicing to get […]

So, for the last several weeks, I’ve been listening to a talk by Ajahn Amaro called, Understanding the Nature of Experiencing Itself. At one point, Ajahn quotes Voltaire’s pithy axiom: “Doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty is absurd.” This has lead me to reflect on ways that the mind tries to assert stability with concepts of certainty. […]

For many, freedom implies the ability to fulfill a spectrum of desires. If you’re free and hungry, you eat whatever suits your fancy. If you’re free and bored, you watch something on the television or listen to some music. But the great wisdom traditions insist that true freedom is based on a foundation of restraint, specifically […]