Category: Meditation
Protecting Others by Protecting Goodwill
Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains what the Buddha actually said about metta, the phrase often translated as “lovingkindness."
When Goodwill is Better than Love: The Meaning of “Metta.”
Loving-kindness is a common translation of the Pali word "metta." But what if metta and lovingkindness are not quite the same?
A Meditation to Identify Your Addiction Triggers
Chönyi Taylor presents a meditation to familiarize yourself with the triggers that set off addictive behaviors.
Reconnecting With Ourselves
To heal our painful habits, we need to turn attention inward and reconnect with our experience through stillness, silence, and spaciousness.
Marguerite Manteau-Rao on “The Strength to Bear”
Marguerite Manteau-Rao's thoughts on how the process of liberating herself "has been made possible by a steady practice of meditation,".
Real Happiness
Renowned Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg explores the myriad benefits of meditation.
Suffering Is Optional
Physical pain is unavoidable, but meditation practice can ease the mental suffering that often accompanies it. Diana Winston teaches us how.
Am I practicing guilt or generosity?
The teachers tackle the question of guilt versus generosity as motivation for helping others.
Zazen: Just Wake Up
Zen teacher Myoan Grace Schireson teaches Zazen, sitting meditation from the Zen tradition, a foundational Buddhist practice.
Mindfulness: The Most Direct Path
Insight teacher James Baraz teaches how to train mindfulness with sitting meditation from the Vipassana tradition.
Visualizing Love
A meditation practice from Sangye Khadro on visualizing Maitreya in order to cultivate loving-kindness.
How Meditation Helps in Difficult Times
Pema Chödrön on four ways that meditation helps us deal with difficulty.
Taking Mindfulness to the Mat
Applying the Buddha’s four foundations of mindfulness to hatha yoga asanas, says Frank Jude Boccio, can enrich practitioners’ experiences.
Mindfulness, Love, and Relationship: Polly Young-Eisendrath on “The Training of Love”
Polly Young-Eisendrath on the training of love: "The potential for love is present, but the requirements are actually quite demanding."
Loving-Kindness is the Best Medicine
The mind that is calm, joyful, and deeply loving, says Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, is the foundation of true health and healing.
Love’s Garden
Peggy Rowe and Larry Ward reflect on the practice of metta, loving-kindness, reflected in the Buddhist imagery of the lotus flower.
Surprises on the Way
Is there a way we can extend and deepen these moments of awakened mind that coexist with our confusion? Or even just notice them when they occur? That’s the point of Buddhist meditation, which is never about doing or creating anything. We simply rest in everything as it is. It sounds so easy, yet nothing is more profound or mysterious.
The Only Choice is Kindness
“Life is so difficult, how can we be anything but kind”—it was these words that inspired Sylvia Boorstein to follow the Buddhist path.
Returning Home
Thich Nhat Hanh offers a guided meditation to relax our body and mind and return to the here and now. Fully present, fully alive, we find we are already home. Do you remember anything from your stay in your mother’s womb? All of us spent about nine months there. That’s quite a long time. I believe…
Not by Ourselves
Shikantaza demands our full self-expression, says Tenshin Reb Anderson, and this can only be realized when we meet intimately with others.