a skeptic's path to enlightenment blog
The Meditation Session: A Playlist for the Mind
A meditation session, like a perfect playlist or a great story, has an arc to it including posture, motivation, stabilizing, and analytic meditation
What Is Meditation?
Meditation has become popular as a way to help reduce stress, be focused at work, sleep better, or simply relax. Yet meditation isn’t just a tool to improve focus or relax, but a way to strengthen the positive qualities we all naturally possess: compassion, kindness, generosity, patience, humor, and finding joy in everyday life.
What is A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment?
The first time I went to see the Dalai Lama I was skeptical, but one of the first things he said was, “Don’t become a Buddhist.”
When a White Man Passes a Fake Twenty — Meditation & Racial Bias
Meditation as an antidote to implicit racial bias, toward a more just country for Black Americans and racial justice
Video: “Taste of Buddhism: Mental Cause and Effect” at Tse Chen Ling
A discussion and meditation on taking control of our mental cause and effect that’s normally unconscious so you can sleep better and be your best self the next day.
Video: “Meditation on the Clarity of Mind Like a Mountain Lake”
A visualization of a mountain lake helps to connect to the subtler clear nature of our mind beneath thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
Video: “Taste of Buddhism: What Is the Mind?” at Tse Chen Ling
If the mind is our thoughts, then what observes those thoughts? What are we without thoughts? Do we ever truly see an object, or only its mental reconstruction?
Video: “Taste of Buddhism: Nothing Lasts, Everything Changes – How to Embrace Impermanence” at Tse Chen Ling
We cling to things as if they won’t change, but as the Coronavirus reveals, change is the nature of reality. By embracing impermanence we release fear and anxiety and become more fully present to those around us.
Video: “Taste of Buddhism: Combatting Coronavirus Fear with Compassion” at Tse Chen Ling
We share the meditation technique of Taking and Giving (Tonglen) that soothes our own fear and anxiety through imagining how others are suffering just as we are, and sincerely wishing to help, to take away our own and others’ pain during the Coronavirus/Covid-19 crisis.