A meditation session can generally be thought of as having three stages:
* Stage One– Arriving and Centering:
Find a comfortable position and balance-begin to let go- relax and grip less tightly to your thoughts. Try to become more attentive, conscious, and mindful of your breathing
*Stage Two–Intensifying and Focusing:...
Focus more closely on your inhalation and exhalation. Try to let the scattered thoughts that pop into your head disappear into your breathing. With each thought interruption try to refocus on the simplicity of just breathing; remaining free and untangled.
*Stage...
Intermeditation- Part 1 of 3
In a recent interview with C.J. Liu of "Fire It Up With CJ", Lama Surya Das shares the art of “inter-meditating” and two powerful Tonglen meditations from his book “Make Me One with Everything” and shows how we can we transcend the mundane into the sacred.
"Sounds like a new age to me." That was a response I received from a recent Facebook posting I made regarding Pope Francis' historic U.S. visit. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could help connect the dots as we hear the Peoples' Pope's loving message today, so resonant with the timeless evergreen healing words of the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, Dag Hammarskjold, Dorothy Day, Reinhold Niebuhr, and so many others who can no longer be seen merely as like voices crying in the wilderness? It is our wilderness, and we must do all we can to protect and save...
I awoke and found it was a new year. Who new? Every day can and even should be a highlyday, miraculous to be-hold-- if we are open, attentive and attuned.
If I only open eyes to hear and ears to feel it, see the light shining as shadows, even thru my selfness, my inner divine heart unfurls wide as the universe; then all is well and all will be well in this agitated yet splendid world.
Happy high holy days, friends and foes alike! May you be joyous and well. Put down the entire project for a moment, take a breath, and awaken fresh and renewed.
I know now that there is no unequivocal good...
MINDPOD NETWORK
EP. 13 - "Seeing Through, Being Through"
When we understand that all being is merely emptiness cloaked in material phenomenon then we begin to see for the…
Loneliness is like the cancer of the modern world, to parse Mother Teresa. We are not alone. We are all interconnected, interdependent and interwoven -- inter-being, to use venerable Thich Nhat Han's felicitous phrase. We are all alone here together, with all beings, all things great and small, visible and invisible.
In my latest book, Make Me One With Everything, I share the following story which was relayed by a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, and illustrates to me the incredible value of inter-meditation in our fragmented, plugged in, tuned-out & cacophonous times.
"If you’ve ever felt ‘at one’ with something—your beloved or your child, a forest trail or a favorite song," shares Lama Surya Das, "then you’ve experienced inter-meditation."
We’re used to thinking of meditation as a solitary activity that occurs solely in our own minds: by turning inward we strive to dissolve obstacles through self-inquiry and find peace through concentration, contemplation, and self-emptying. But inter-meditation (or co-meditation) is the other half of meditation: it’s inclusive and instead of getting rid of things we embrace people, feelings, and events.
In...
