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ARTArticle***Meditation: A Modern Look at the Practice and Science of MeditationI was a meditation failure. I began meditating at the age of eight when I purchased a "Hypnodisk" I saw in the novelty Johnson-Smith catalog. The manual explained how to induce a hypnotic trance, information which soon caused my teacher to write to my parents asking me to stop hypnotizing the class. But it also contained some basic meditation instructions I began using at that time. When I turned 14, my meditation practice turned serious and I learned biofeedback to help me with migraines.ARTArticle***Meditation: Is It a Relaxation System?Is meditation meant to be a relaxation system? I wonder about that. When I was eighteen, I was introduced to a famous American meditation teacher and we became friends. Through him, I met another American who had spent the prior six years in Thailand as a Buddhist monk. This former monk had only recently returned to the US and traded out his monk's robes for regular clothing. He was still working out what his "right livelihood" might be - you know, work that would pay him enough to cover his food and rent.ARTArticle***Meditation: Mindfulness or Mindlessness?One of my closest friends wrote me to say he planned to go on a mindfulness meditation retreat to find some relaxation. I picked up the phone to suggest that he might want to reconsider that plan. Now, I’d like to be clear about this.ARTArticle***Music Meditation Mantra and MeFriends often talk to me about the hours they spend doing triathlons or running marathons, and usually I say that I can't imagine doing something I love for so many hours. So it surprises me to remember that I once spent three days chanting Hindu mantras, non-stop, at the top of my lungs. This is sometimes called japa, or Indian meditation music. Sometimes it's just called crazy. These days, a lot of people are only familiar with chanting music meditation through the work of the popular performer, Krishna Das.ARTArticle***My Problem with Transcendental Meditation® StudiesFirst, a message to my readers who practice TM® (Transcendental Meditation®): I am not taking any position for or against Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the TM® organization, TM® itself, or anything else related to TM®. Now that we've taken care of that… I do, however, have a position regarding the studies that have been promoted to "prove" that TM® is the best thing since meditatively sliced bread. My basic position is this: Most of these studies, maybe all of them, are pretty questionable. Before any of the previously mentioned TM® advocates "get all up in my grill," (lov ARTArticle***New Meditation Practices That Actually WorkI was eight years old when I first began meditating. No, I wasn't raised in a commune by hippie parents. I checked out a book on meditation from the school library and practiced the technique in the book. So began my thirty years of meditation practice. Over the course of my meditation career, I tried many different kinds of meditation practices - from simple meditation techniques to more difficult, advanced practices.ARTArticle***New York Style MeditationThe New York subway used to be my meditation room. Somehow, the noise in the background of the subway served to drown out the noise in the background of my mind and made it much easier to concentrate. When I was in grad school, as I rode from Greenwich Village to Columbia University, I could get in a good thirty minute meditation session with one quick break to change trains at 59th Street. But my favorite meditation story from New York is this one: There used to be a store called "The Warlock Shop" on W. 16th Street. As the name suggests, it was about paganism and witchcraft.ARTArticle***Online Meditation ClassesMeditation classes you can take online are an amazing new development on the spiritual path. Previously in order to learn meditation, you’d need to travel - sometimes to the other side of the globe – in order to find a teacher.ARTArticle***Prayer Meditation – Fulfilling Your True DesiresAre meditation and prayers the same thing? Some traditions use the words meditation and prayer interchangeably. You can find Jewish and Hindu and Catholic and Buddhist meditation practices that require the repetition or contemplation of a particular religious passage or concept. To illustrate, there are those that will say the Lord's Prayer over and over in a similar fashion to how someone practicing Transcendental Meditation® might repeat a mantra.ARTArticle***Self Focused. The first step toward personal growthToo often we get caught up in the judgments of others. We put too much emphasis or importance on what other people think of us, and we become focused on tending to their perceptions in order to control a given situation. In the worst cases we engage in a constant battle to control what people think, a process known as image management. There’s nothing wrong with this—most businesses and politicians do it to perpetuate or maintain a public image, and ordinary people like you and me do it as well.ARTArticle***Starting a Regular Meditation PracticeMost all meditation traditions suggest practicing meditation daily. Regardless of whether you are doing a mindfulness practice or yogic meditation, a Buddhist meditation or relaxation practice, or even listening to a guided meditatio CD, daily practice is usually recommended by most meditation teachers. My first formal meditation practice was in the Kriya Yoga tradition. It was in 1972 and I was ten years old. I was instructed to meditate for thirty minutes, twice daily, with an additional two hours each weekend.ARTArticle***Stop Thinking - a Somewhat Guided, Somewhat MeditationWhen we try to stop thoughts, we are playing a cerebral kind of "Whack-A-Mole." It doesn't matter how many times you go after that mole, there are always more of them bursting out of various holes, over and over, faster and faster, not stopping. But there are other possible ways to experience your thoughts than whacking at them like pesky rodents. For example, you could try being kind. One way to approach this is to consider that the mind is like an ocean with waves we call thoughts.ARTArticle***The Buddha Was Not EnlightenedAlright, let’s talk about the "E-Word," one of those combinations of letters that carries almost as much baggage as the c-word or the -word, depending, of course, on who you hang with and what country you call home. People argue about this word; they criticize it; they make up stories about it.ARTArticle***The Meditation Mind - A Simple Daily MeditationHere is a daily meditation to play with… I haven't ever heard anyone complain about the fact that their body feels, or their ears hear, or their nose smells or their eyes see. To put it another way, we don't usually complain or attempt to fix our senses when they are doing what they were designed to do. The job of our mind is to think. At times it thinks a little, at other times it thinks a lot. Some of the thoughts it has are enjoyable, and others seem to be less so.ARTArticle***Tips for Buddhist Meditation RetreatsI’ve done somewhere in the neighborhood of forty Buddhist meditation retreats. While some only lasted a day or two, more than half involved ten to fifteen days of practicing Buddhist meditation for up to sixteen hours a day. Some were Tibetan meditation retreats. Some retreats were in the Zen tradition, including retreats for Zen archery, a form moving meditation called Kyudo. But most of my retreats were Vipassana meditation retreats. I’m not telling you this to impress you or show off. Really, all this demonstrates is that in my twenties and thirties, I didn’t have a regular job.ARTArticle***TM® in School - Good Idea or Hidden Religion?I recently read an Arizona Daily Star article about how Transcendental Meditation® is being taught in an alte ative-minded school. Now, since I teach meditation myself, you might expect I’d be happy about this, particularly since the article reports positive results. If only it were so easy. Let’s examine why it’s not.ARTArticle***TM® in School - Good Idea or Hidden Religion?I recently read an Arizona Daily Star article about how Transcendental Meditation® is being taught in an alte ative-minded school. Now, since I teach meditation myself, you might expect I’d be happy about this, particularly since the article reports positive results. If only it were so easy. Let’s examine why it’s not.ARTArticle***Travels in Istanbul - "You Watch, I Drive!""You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway." Steve Maraboli "Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing." Anonymous I'd finally arrived in Istanbul late at night. My sister had arranged for a driver to pick me up at the airport.ARTArticle***Understanding Tibetan Buddhist MeditationOne of the countries in which Buddhism has had a recent impact is Tibet. "Recent," in this case means, oh, about 1000 years ago, when Buddhism was brought to Tibet from India by Padmasambhava. These days, Tibetan Buddhism is popular world-wide. The Dalai Lama has written many books, won a Nobel prize, and fills stadiums to overflowing with people who want to learn more about Tibetan Buddhism and experience its ceremonies. One thing that makes Tibetan Buddhism so popular is that they guarantee you can become enlightened in this lifetime. Of course, this claim has a problem.ARTArticle***Vipassana vs. Zen MeditationWhich is better: Zen meditation or Vipassana meditation? I’m regularly asked this question because new students often have some friends who are into Zen meditation retreats and other friends suggesting they try Vipassana meditation retreats. Or they check the bookstore and discover that, in the Buddhism section, half the books there are on Zen meditation and half the books are on Vipassana meditation.ARTArticle***What is Meditation?To some people, meditation means sitting in a dark cave on top of a mountain in a loin cloth, burning incense and chanting some foreign Sanskrit word while eating nothing but tree bark. Other people define meditation as a state they experience while participating in an activity they are passionate about, such as painting, athletics, or perhaps even making love. Some people value the benefits of meditation over the practice itself.ARTArticle***Who Cares about Buddhist Monks?More than ever before, meditation is being researched by science. Because of advances in imaging technology, such as fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging, we can now see much more than we used to about the inner workings of our brains.ARTArticle***Who Do You See When You Look In The Mirror?"People want to be in their own fashion tribes, so they want to wear the same clothes to be connected to everyone else in that tribe. But they want to be different from other tribes." Christian Lacroix ARTArticle***Why Do You Want to Meditate?There are a lot of different reasons people want to learn meditation. Maybe you think meditation will help you relax and better handle stress. Perhaps you play a sport and your coach recommended meditation to improve your performance. Maybe you are focused on spiritual growth and believe that if you meditate, you will move faster down your path or find an easier way to get where you are going. Perhaps you are experiencing some illness that you think meditation will help you better manage. Maybe you are in pain and meditation was recommended to you for healing or pain relief.ARTArticle***Why Isn’t Meditation Instruction Free?“Meditation teachers should offer their instruction for free.” About once a month, I get an email telling me that. Often, I hear this from people who have studied with meditation teachers in India or have visited ashrams where they weren’t asked for payment for classes they took. This gave them the idea that the teachings were free, even though they may have paid for room and board. The reality in these places is more complicated than it looks, however.ARTArticle***Your Exterior vs Your Interior"One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up." Friedrich Nietzsche "Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." Carl Jung ARTArticle***Your Perfect Meditation CushionHave you found your perfect meditation cushion yet? You know, a mediation cushion that lets you sit for hours at a time, staying focused and alert and concentrated, with no back pain or any numbness in your legs? The type of meditation cushion that gives you a straight spine with no effort at all? Of course you haven’t. Such a magical cushion doesn’t exist. I’ll always remember when I was invited to participate in a free meditation group taking place in Kathmandu, Nepal. I arrived a little early. The room was very small, maybe big enough to hold twenty students at the most.ARTArticle***Zen Meditation: How it WorksFor people in the West, Zen Buddhist meditation can often seem mysterious and magical, as well as a bit confusing at times. If you take some time to look unde eath the mythology around Zen, however, it can be much easier to comprehend. I have to warn you, though, that discovering the simplicity behind Zen will remove the magic and mystery that has drawn so many people to it in the first place. Okay, so let’s take a closer look. My focus for this discussion is going to be on Zen archery, also called Kyudo, often referred to as Zen meditation in motion.ARTArticle12/12/12: The Opening Toward Creative CooperationEveryone is aware now that December 21st, 2012 marks the end of the Mayan calendar. Not only has this information become mainstream; it has provoked apocalyptic fears, doomsday books and films, and even triggered outbreaks of panic in Russia and France, as reported in a recent New York Times article. It has also brought much joy and hope to those, like me, who don’t believe that 12/21/12 will mark the end of the world, but the beginning of a New Earth, a new humanity, and—if you’ve watched my brief video about this—freedom from the prison-like 3rd dimension on this planet.ARTArticle2010-Astrological AspectsHappy New Year… 2010!!! A year in Pre-view… Re-view… Now View. Let Doom & Gloom become Zoom & & Bloom!! Dreams flying… Choose as you Create. New Year’s Eve starts off with a Full Blue Moon & Lunar Eclipse, 4 planets in Tropical Capricorn, & Mercury in Retrograde until January 15th. It is both a culmination & a beginning time… a good time to look at the structure of what our new year might be like. Imagine it.

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