How to Meditate
 How to Meditate: The Shambhala Sun offers the best selection of meditation instructions available on the web, with contributions from Pema Chödrön, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jack Kornfield, and many more great teachers.
Why is sitting and doing
nothing the most difficult, mysterious, joyful, painful, profound, and
life-changing thing we can do? Because it is the radical opposite of
what we usually do to try to make ourselves happy. Yet, it works! In this selection of articles from the
Shambhala Sun, we present teachings on the various techniques of
meditation from all the major schools of Buddhism. Just click any article's title to start reading.
Our July 2012 magazine featured Thich Nhat Hanh, Dzogchen Ponlop, and five more great modern teachers explaining the
qualities of awakened mind and the Buddhist meditations that cultivate
them. Browse them all.
Basic Buddhist mindfulness/awareness meditation instructions from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.
Norman Fischer
proposes a short trial run to get your meditation practice started. Take
note, beginners: it doesn't get any clearer than this! From our special 2010 "How to Meditate" issue.
Pema Chödrön teaches a
practice for connecting with suffering — ours
and
that which is all around us — everywhere we go. From our 2010 "How to Meditate" issue.
In Buddhist meditation wise attention—mindfulness—acts like a zoom lens. Our meditation ranges from close attention to the details of our body and breath, to open awareness as vast as the sky. Jack Kornfield, presents a meditation from his book The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace.
“Our mind is like hard ground that has not seen water for a long time. As meditation practitioners, we begin to till that ground so that we can grow the mind of enlightenment.” The first of three teachings from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on basic meditation.
“Mindfulness practice is simple and completely feasible. Just by sitting and doing nothing, we are doing a tremendous amount.” The second of three teachings from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on basic meditation.
“The process of undoing bewilderment is based on stabilizing and strengthen our mind. Shamatha meditation is how we do that.” The last of three teachings from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on basic meditation.
Thich Nhat Hanh
offers a guided meditation
to relax our body and mind and return to the here and now. Fully
present, fully alive, we find we are already home.
Joseph Goldstein on how three
principles of
meditation can be applied to the world's conflicts. The method is
mindfulness, the expression is compassion, and the essence is wisdom.
The
ability to dissolve thoughts is
essential to attaining liberation, says renowned Dzogchen teacher
Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche.
Devotion and Pure Perception are two principles
that lie at the root of Vajrayana practice that lead beyond confusion
to thought-free wakefulness.
“In
subtle and in more obvious ways, the
experience of birth and death is continuous," says Judy Lief. "All that
we experience arises fresh, appears for a time, and then dissolves. It
is as if we were riding the crest of a wave in the middle of a vast
ocean. That arising and falling of experience is our life; it is what
we have to work with.”
A
complete spiritual practice—or even just
a healthy, satisfying life—requires working with both body and mind.
Cyndi Lee and David Nichtern explain why yoga
practice and Buddhist
meditation is the perfect mind-body combination.
Rebirth and karma are the Buddhist beliefs
that Westerners find hardest to accept. Yet are they really so foreign
to us? If we look at our own experience, we find that thoughts,
emotions, and self-images are continually arising, ending, and being
reborn. We see that the seeds we plant in our consciousness in one
moment will determine what we experience in the next. This is also what
we experience as we go from lifetime to lifetime. Therefore, says Tulku
Thondup Rinpoche, we should be concerned above all else with
creating
positive karma to lay the ground for our future enlightenment.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
on meditation, the spiritual path, and a sense of basic being beyond
relative time
The
Zen practice of just sitting, says Lewis
Richmond, doesn’t help us to
reach our destination. It allows us to stop having one. But how do you
“go” nowhere?
Zen teacher Ezra Bayda discusses three aspects of the Buddhist practice of sitting meditation. Being in the body is the ground of practice. Labeling our thoughts breaks our identification with them. Opening into the heart of experience awakens us to love and compassion.
Step-by-Step instructions on how to do this important meditation practice, the foundation of all Buddhist meditations, from the famed Vipassana master Sayadaw U Pandita.
Vipassana Meditation aims at personal transformation. Through understanding and awareness we retrain the mind and life becomes a glide instead of a struggle. A teaching from Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana.
Traleg Rinpoche describes the techniques of Buddhist meditation. Taming and transforming our wild passions involves the meditation of paying attention to the body and paying attention to our thoughts.
Meditators and musclemen don’t seem to
have much in common, but Thanissaro
Bhikkhu says
meditators can learn a lot from the techniques of strength training.
More related articles:
• Awakening in the Body, by Phillip Moffitt
• The Key to Knowing Ourselves is Meditation, by Pema Chödrön
• Buddhist Meditation is Relaxing with the Truth, by Pema Chödrön
• Counsels from My Heart, by Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche
• The Universal Meditation Technique of S.N. Goenka, by Norman Fischer
• Nine Stages of Training the Mind, by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
• True Stories About Sitting Meditation, with Charlotte Joko Beck, Joseph Goldstein, Sylvia Boorstein and Sharon Salzberg
• How We Get Hooked and How We Get Unhooked, by Pema Chödrön
• How to Live a Genuine Life, by Ezra Bayda
• Loosening the Knots of Anger, by Thich Nhat Hanh
• The Practice of Looking Deeply Using Three Dharma Seals: Impermanence, No-self, and Nirvana, by Thich Nhat Hanh
• Meditation: The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Links:
• Zen Mountain Monastery
• Shambhala
• Insight Meditation Society
• Cambridge Insight Meditation Center
• San Francisco Zen Center
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