How to Meditate
 How to Meditate: The Shambhala Sun offers the best selection of meditation instructions available on the web.
Sit quietly and upright, pay attention to your experience, and don’t
try to achieve a special state of mind. 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. All Buddhist
meditation aims to help us find liberation by going against the grain
of our usual habits of mind. 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.
Basic Buddhist mindfulness/awareness meditation instructions from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.
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.
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.
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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