At what ages developmentally can kids meditate? I will be very honest with you and tell you, I don’t have a clue, but as far as I can tell, nobody else does either. I look forward to the day when some of the research scientists I work with figure this out. I am very interested in this intellectually, but what I am more interested in is teaching children how to approach experience with an open mind, with an open heart. Which brings me to the Quaker Oats box, how we start most of our new … [Read more...]
Freedom Through Not Knowing
I was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in 1974, and trained in that tradition—the Geluk tradition, the more scholarly tradition of Tibetan Buddhism—for the following six or seven years. Part of that training involved dialectics, the logical and critical analysis of Buddhist doctrine. One of the assurances I was given as a young monk was that, were I to devote myself to this critical inquiry, I would come to certainty that ideas such as rebirth and karma can be demonstrated by reason to be … [Read more...]
The Path of Concentration and Mindfulness
This article is adapted from a workshop offered at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, February 23-25,1996 by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Abbot of Metta Forest Monastery, San Diego County, California. Many people tell us that the Buddha taught two different types of meditation: mindfulness meditation and concentration meditation. Mindfulness meditation, they say, is the direct path, while concentration practice is the scenic route that you take at your own risk because it's very easy to get … [Read more...]
Secular mindfulness: potential & pitfalls
This article is based on a presentation at last year's conference at BCBS on Secular Buddhism. Introduction Imagine for a moment that you are a health & fitness trainer—you work with people who go the gym regularly and work out daily, to support them in their efforts to cultivate a perfectly-toned body. Over the past few years you've noticed that many other people in society are beginning to do some exercise—they don't work out daily, but perhaps they attend a weekly yoga class or go … [Read more...]
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening
Having taught Buddhadharma for almost 40 years, Joseph Goldstein has written or been co-author of many books. His newest, to be published November 1, is Mindfulness: A Practical Guide for Awakening. While his earlier books focused on various teachings about meditation and other insight practices, distilling the Buddha's teachings as he learned them from his teachers, Munindra, Goenka, and Sayadaw U Pandita, his new book comes from a deep personal investigation of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, one of … [Read more...]
New rivers, new rafts: The Secular Buddhism Conference
Here some clansmen learn the Dhamma—discourses, stanzas, expositions, verses, exclamations, sayings, birth stories, marvels, and answers to questions—and having learned the Dhamma, they examine the meaning of those teachings with wisdom. Examining the meaning of those teachings with wisdom, they gain a reflective acceptance of them. They do not learn the Dhamma for the sake of criticising others and for winning in debates, and they experience the good for the sake of which they learned the … [Read more...]
Wheels of Fire: The Buddha’s Radical Teaching on Process
Ādittapariyāya Sutta: The Fire Sermon, SN 35.28 "Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame. Contact at the eye is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye—experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain—that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging & death, with … [Read more...]
The Busier You Are, The Slower You Should Go
When I lived in South Korea as a Zen nun, I heard about a nun called Songou Sunim and went to practice with her for three months. She was known for her simplicity and dedication to practice. Once she practiced in a hermitage for many months and decided to eat raw food to make things simpler. She sat on a zabuton (flat cushion) without a zafu (round cushion) again to make things simpler and become less dependent on external things. I tried it but I could not do it. I had to renounce this … [Read more...]
Mindfulness & the Cognitive Process
If sati, mindfulness, is not there in ordinary life, it is not working. If it is only there on retreat, and absent in your daily life, this is also problematic. What makes this integration so difficult is that taṅhā, desire or craving, is not just something added to our experience: It is literally built into our cognitive process. We are, if you will, born with the pathology of desire. Part I: The Pathology of Desire Craving, or taṅhā in Pali, is the central problem identified by the … [Read more...]
Teaching Mindfulness to Children
Christopher Willard, PsyD. taught "Child's Mind: Professional Training for Mindfulness With Young People" at BCBS April 20-22, 2012. He is a psychologist and learning specialist at Tufts University and in private practice in the Boston area. He is the author of Child’s Mind, Mindfulness Practices to Help Our Children Be More Focused, Calm and Relaxed, and is working on a series of follow-up workbooks for teens that he teaches nationally and internationally. He currently serves on the Board of … [Read more...]