Thursday, 11th March 2010 2:31pm. Home
| Sayadaw U Jotika — My mind is my home by www.bangkokpost.com | ||||
| "To overcome loneliness, first learn to meditate, to live in the moment. Living like this, your mind becomes very peaceful, very calm, very strong. Mindfulness makes you very stong. You will develop inner strength." Or, if you prefer, lots to think about.
Sayadaw U Jotika from Burma took an early dislike to an anonymous poem from around the 14th century that’s best known as The Samurai’s Creed, he told a packed audience at a recent dhamma talk in Bangkok. (Sayadaw is a Burmese honorific for a highly respected senior monk.) detail... | ||||
| Author Interview James William Coleman by http://atheism.about.com | ||||
| Can Buddhism can really adapt to Western culture or if it will always remain something Asian (and I presume you mean foreign to us) at heart? The basic assumptions upon which Buddhism is built are certainly very different from those of Western culture. But it seems to me that the movement of Buddhism to the West is part of a slow process of cultural globalization. People in the East are already thinking more like Westerners and perhaps the cultural flow is starting to move in the other direction as well.
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| An Interview with Susan Piver by http://www.drweil.com | ||||
| There are so many kinds of meditation. How do I figure out which one is right for me?
There are two styles of Buddhist meditation most commonly taught in the West.
Shamatha is a Sanskrit word that means "calm abiding." In Shamatha practice, one takes the breath as the object of meditation. We're always meditating on something - usually we're meditating on our fears, doubts, and cravings. In Shamatha, the breath becomes the focus instead. You simply place your attention on your breath (usually at the tip of your nose) and "ride" it in and out. Thoughts will continue to rise and fall but in this practice we take our mind off of them and put it on the breath instead. (Sometimes people think meditating means ceasing thought. This is impossible. What is possible is to change your relationship to thought.) When you notice that attention has strayed away from the breath, simply bring it back. This practice stabilizes the mind.
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| Bhikkhuni Dhammananda Interview by Cittasamvaro | ||||
| Venerable Dhammananda taught as a lay person in Thammasart University, Dept of Philosophy and Religion for 27 years, and published 40+ books and translations mostly under her lay name Dr Chatsumarn Kabilsingh. She now oversees the quarterly publication of Yasodara, which focuses on the activities of Buddhist women and Bhikkhunis around the world. In between, that is, her frequent trips abroad teaching and promoting the cause of Bhikkhuni ordination in the Theravada and Tibetan traditions, and running regular classes and 3 day meditation retreats in her own temple just outside Bangkok. Her captivating tones and manner render the wisdom of the years that are hidden from her youthful features. detail... | ||||
| Where Shall One Go With A Heart Full of Non-Violence? [-Maha Ghosananda's work in refugee camps in Thailand] by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés The Moderate Voice (USA) October 15, 2007 | ||||
| Kornfield is one of the foremost teachers of Theravada Buddhism in the West. He was trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India (He is on the far right in the photo). He graduated from Dartmouth in 1967, joined the Peace Corps in Public Health Service in northeast Thailand, home to some of the last forest monasteries of Buddhist monks and nuns.
“The Dalai Lama put his head in his hands and wept. He reminded them of the Buddhist precept of no killing, no harming living beings, the precept the Dalai Lama has taught all his life as the incarnate head of Buddhism. detail... | ||||
| Thirty Years as a Western Buddhist Monk by An Interview With Ajahn Pasanno | ||||
| Fearless Mountain: What was your early religious experience?
Ajahn Pasanno: I was raised in northern Manitoba, 600 miles north of the U.S. border. My religion was Anglican, which is Episcopalian in the U.S. I had a good experience growing up as a Christian. It was a small town and a small church. My family was reasonably devout. My father had grown up in the United Church, and we took religious classes together. But by the time I was 16 or 17, I found it difficult to maintain any kind of faith. I stopped going to church and taking communion. I started to look for alternatives. detail... | ||||
| THE PRACTICE OF MEDITATION with JACK KORNFIELD, Ph.D. by Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove,Intuition Network | ||||
| The Intuition Network, A Thinking Allowed Television Underwriter, presents the following transcript from the series Thinking Allowed, Conversations On the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery, with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove.
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| An Interview With Ajahn Sumedho : Everyday Path Moments by Published in the Spirit Rock News, Volume 19, Number 1, February 2006 – August 2006 | ||||
| Ajahn Sumedho is abbot of the Amaravati Buddhist Centre in Hertfordshire and a former disciple of the late Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, under whom he studied for ten years at the Wat Pah Pong monastery. Born in Seattle, Washington in 1934 and fully ordained in 1967, Ajahn Sumedho has worked closely with several lay organizations, including The English Sangha Trust. In 1975, he established Wat Pah Nanachat, international forest monastery, in Ubon Province, Thailand, and is considered a founding figure of the Thai Forest monastic tradition in the West. He is the author of Now is the Knowing, and his teachings are widely recognized for being practical and direct. Ajahn Sumedho was interviewed by Philip Moffitt, vipassana teacher and founder of the Life Balance Institute, for a feature in the Spirit Rock News, Volume 19, Number 1 (February 2006-August 2006)
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| FINDING MY RELIGION Buddhist teacher and author Jack Kornfield on mindfulness, happiness and his own spiritual journey by David Ian Miller, Special to SF Gate, Monday, November 28, 2005 | ||||
| Meditation is one good way to learn mindfulness. There are many good ways. To be really good at something, you need to be mindful. A very good chef has to be mindful of the ingredients and the knife and the taste that's actually there in that particular dish. So it's a skill that's a part of human development in many areas.
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| Study: Meditation may boost brain activity by CNN, Wednesday, November 16, 2005 | ||||
| Well, these people in particular practice something called insight meditation, which is a form of meditation where you just watch your breath. As you inhale and exhale, you just watch the sensations associated with it. They practice, on average, about 40 minutes a day. We have people with as little as one year of experience and as many as 30 years of experience. [...] detail... | ||||