Wanna Check out Buddhism? Top 10 Buddhist Teachers Living in America.

December 6, 2008

Wanna get you some meditation, some peace, some wisdom? Wanna do a weekend program where you learn how to calm and open your mind to…reality? Buddhism–tested over 2,500 years in dozens of diverse cultures–is worth a go. This "non-theistic" (read: it’s up to you) religion comes in dozens of styles–Zen, Theravada, Tibetan–but it’s always, at its root, about learning to be a good, sane, peaceful, compassionate person. Still, finding the right teacher for you is an age-old task–made somewhat easier by online teaching schedules, hundreds of wonderful Buddhist books (why, only a generation ago there were only a few tomes to choose from).

Read the complete article by Waylon Lewis…

Keywords: Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhist, Buddhist Meditation, Compassion, Dalai Lama, How To Meditate, Karme Choling, Kripalu, Meditation, Meditation Practice, Omega Institute, Pema Chodron, Religion, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Shambhala, Shambhala Mountain Center, Sharon Salzberg, Spirituality, Tibet, Tibetan, Zen, Living News

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Why Meditation Is A Sport

July 31, 2008

I read an article recently that drew an analogy of the term ‘meditation’ to ’sports’, a word that describes a large class or family of varying forms of activity such as track, baseball basketball, etc. The general family of meditation was defined as ‘complex emotional and attentional regulatory strategies developed for various ends including cultivation of well-being and emotional balance’ (Lutz et al., 2008: Cell). (Various forms of meditation might include TM, mindfulness, yoga, Tai Chi, centering prayer, etc.).

This led me to ponder the reason I meditate. Why? To what ‘various end’?

Read the complete article by Susan Smalley at www.huffingtonpost.com…

"Direct your eyesight inward and you will find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered" – Henry David Thoreau

Keywords: meditation, TM, mindfulness, yoga, tai chi, qigong, chi kung, centering prayer, religion, health, stress reduction, well-being, compassion

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Skip to the heart beat and it’s all the more rosy

July 14, 2008

Circumcise your heart? It sounds, when you’re done wincing, like some snippet of  Eastern mysticism, some off-cut – if you’ll pardon the pun – of the mantras, kabbalas or kama sutras we presume to be more poetic than what-I-suppose-we-might-still-call our own spiritual tradition.

Read the complete article by Elizabeth Farrelly…

Keywords: Deuteronomy, Stephen Post, Jill Neimark, Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, Case Western University Medical School, altruism, compassion, altruism, Alzheimer’s, epidemiology, heartmath, heart rate variability, hrv, cortisol, adrenaline

Also see Stephen Post’s book: Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by the Simple Act of Giving

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A Superhighway to Bliss

May 25, 2008

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR was a neuroscientist working at Harvard’s brain research center when she experienced nirvana.
But she did it by having a stroke.

On Dec. 10, 1996, Dr. Taylor, then 37, woke up in her apartment near Boston with a piercing pain behind her eye. A blood vessel in her brain had popped. Within minutes, her left lobe — the source of ego, analysis, judgment and context — began to fail her. Oddly, it felt great.

The incessant chatter that normally filled her mind disappeared. Her everyday worries — about a brother with schizophrenia and her high-powered job — untethered themselves from her and slid away.
Her perceptions changed, too. She could see that the atoms and molecules making up her body blended with the space around her; the whole world and the creatures in it were all part of the same magnificent field of shimmering energy.
“My perception of physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air,” she has written in her memoir, “My Stroke of Insight,” which was just published by Viking.

Read the full article…

Published Sunday, May 25, 2008 on BlueRidgeNow.com by Leslie Kaufman

See Jill’s book:

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Meditation can help create compassion, study finds

April 10, 2008

Posted : Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:15:14 GMT
San Francisco – Positive emotions such as compassion and loving-kindness can be trained with special meditation techniques, a study of 16 Tibetan monks by researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison found. Published recently in the journal PLoS One, brain imaging using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan the brains of the monks who all had at least 10,000 hours of meditation practise.

The scans revealed that the limbic system of the brain responsible for emotions such as compassion showed significantly more activity among the Buddhist monks with many years of meditation practise.

The monks were compared with a second group of 32 people, who two weeks earlier had been instructed for the first time in meditation techniques.

In the instruction session, the novices were asked to think about someone they cared for such as their parents, siblings or a beloved person and to let the “mind be invaded by a feeling of altruistic love”.

In the resting or non-meditative state, the subjects were asked to remain relaxed with neither pleasant nor unpleasant feelings.

The scans revealed significant activity in the brain’s limbic system that supports functions such as emotions and behaviour. The brain activity was, however, stronger among the meditating monks than in the control group, the researchers revealed.

“Loving kindness and compassion are central to the philosophy of the Dalai Lama,” study leader Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health said, in elaborating the findings.

Copyright, respective author or news agency

Source: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/197941,meditation-can-help-create-compassion-study-finds.html

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