IJ: Maybe we can start by talking about your own practice. Do you find that practice changes much from day to day, week to week, or month to month? WN: There’s some variation. Since I did a retreat a few years ago with Pa Auk Sayadaw, that great concentration master, I often include periods of jhāna practice, where I work directly with the breath and with material jhānas, and perhaps go into mettā from there. IJ: You participated in that somewhat famous 4-month retreat with Pa … [Read more...]
News - Interview
Mettā: What It Is, What It Isn’t
November 23, 2015Insight Journal: How has your relationship to mettā changed over the years? Shaila Catherine: When I was first introduced to meditation in the 1980s, the classic model was a 10-day meditation retreat emphasizing mindfulness. At some point during each retreat there would be a guided mettā meditation. And I have to admit that at first I hated it. IJ: Why did you hate it? SC: I really liked the silence of mindfulness practice, and all the phrases felt disruptive. It was hard enough for me … [Read more...]
Bowing to Life Deeply
October 20, 2015Ruth Denison is the founder and resident teacher of Dhamma Dena Desert Vipassana Center in Joshua Tree, California. She is the first generation of women teachers of vipassanā in the West, and has been teaching at Insight Meditation Society in Barre since its inception in 1976. Ruth shared her life story and thoughts with Insight's editors while teaching at IMS in the fall of 1996. Ruth, you have a fascinating and unusual life story to tell. Can you share some of it with us? How did you get … [Read more...]
May All Beings Practice Dying
October 16, 2015Rodney Smith lives in Seattle, Washington, where he has been running a hospice. He has also set up hospices in Texas and Massachusetts and teaches workshops nationwide on working with death and the dying. He has been offering vipassanā retreats at IMS for many years, and has recently completed a book called Lessons from the Dying, to be published by Wisdom Publications. You were on staff at IMS in the very early years, weren't you? What was it like in those days? When I first came on … [Read more...]
To the Forest for Refuge
October 16, 2015Joseph, after practicing in India for ten years and teaching in this country for more than twenty, you have recently returned from a well-earned teaching sabbatical, in which I understand you did quite a bit of personal meditation practice. Has anything emerged from this experience, in terms of greater clarity? I think one of the pieces that has emerged from the time off is a greater clarity about where I'd like to put my energy in the following years. With so many newer teachers coming … [Read more...]
Finding Our Place
October 13, 2015Myoshin, you have been teaching at IMS and other retreat centers quite a bit these past few years. How did you first get involved with Buddhist meditation? I grew up in Western Canada, and from a very early age was drawn to nature. I found a sense of belonging there, a refuge from a chaotic and often painful world. It was in high school that I first read the book Siddhartha [by Herman Hesse]. This book touched a sense of possibility in me that I'd also felt from being in nature. Something was … [Read more...]
A Ripple in a Pond
October 13, 2015I know how reticent monks are to talk about themselves, but I cannot help but begin by asking about your own Jātaka story. How did you wind up as a Buddhist monk living in England? Well, where does it all begin? I suppose around the age of six or seven I started to recognize something of what death was about: that we all die. I remember talking to my brother about it and he said, “Oh, don’t think about it, it will be all right.” Now he is a businessman and I’m a monk. (Laughs.) I remember … [Read more...]
It Can Be Very Simple
October 13, 2015Ajahn Sundarā, a senior nun from the Amaravati community in England, spent the three-month vassa, or rains retreat, at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in the summer of 2001. She spoke to us just before her departure. Thank you, Ajahn, for taking the time to talk with us this morning. Let me start by asking you something simple: What do you feel is the essence of dharma? [Laughter.] This is not such a simple question... The essence of dharma is liberation. Liberation from dukkha, … [Read more...]
A Beautiful Paradox
October 9, 2015Paula, I know you would not describe yourself as a dharma teacher, and yet you have deep connections to IMS, don’t you? Yes, I do have a long and significant history with IMS. I would say I am a teacher and practitioner of peacebuilding, who has been deeply inspired by the dharma for about 20 years. I was a psychotherapist at the time I began sitting, drawn to meditation to understand my inner life at a deeper level than I had access to through psychotherapy. I became involved in the … [Read more...]
Climbing to the Top of the Mountain
October 9, 2015You have lived in a forest monastery in Sri Lanka for many years, Bhante. What brings you to America? I originally came to the U.S. to visit my father and sister. But for twenty-five years I have been afflicted with a chronic headache condition, which has resisted every type of treatment I have tried to date. My father suggested I arrange a consultation at The Headache Institute of New York, a clinic in Manhattan. Thus for the past few months I have been taking treatment at this clinic. Is … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- …
- 9
- Next Page »