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Meditation Month Excerpt: The Committee of the Mind
It's Meditation Month here at Tricycle! It's time to join the Tricycle staff in making the commitment to sit every day of February—no exceptions and no excuses. We're sharing videos, audio interviews, articles, and tips from well-known Buddhist teachers that will help you develop and maintain a meditation practice throughout the month. Today we have an excerpt from Thanissaro Bhikkhu's new book With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation. You can download the book in its entirety here.
The Committee of the Mind
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Treasury of Lives: Kagyu Founders Part 6, Marpa Sherab Yeshe and Jikten Gonpo
Biography and autobiography in Tibet are important sources for both education and inspiration. Tibetans have kept such meticulous records of their teachers that thousands of names are known and discussed in a wide range of biographical material. All these names, all these lives—it can be a little overwhelming. The authors involved in the Treasury of Lives are currently mining the primary sources to provide English-language biographies of every known religious teacher from Tibet and the Himalaya, all of which are organized for easy searching and browsing. Every Tuesday on the Tricycle blog, we will highlight and reflect on important, interesting, eccentric, surprising and beautiful stories found within this rich literary tradition.
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Sexual Misconduct in the Rinzai-ji Community
Yesterday the New York Times picked up on the sex scandal currently swirling around the Rinzai-ji association of Zen centers, and more specifically, around their teacher, Joshu Sasaki Roshi.
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Mindfulness And The Body: Second Week of Sharon Salzberg's Retreat
In this second week of Sharon Salzberg's retreat, "Mindfulness and the Body," she expands our understanding of mindfulness as a practice and perceptual tool. She describes mindfulness as a "quality of awareness where our attention is not distorted by bias." Developing awareness of our minds' habitual thoughts that invade and color our perception is essential to changing the way we relate to our experiences.
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Meditation Month, Day 8: Meditation, Interrupted
My regular sitting practice tapered off about a year ago. I wish I could say what happened and why but I’m not really sure. My life didn’t fall apart or anything. Nor did it fall apart when I stopped sitting. I guess I still had my practice of sorts, cobbled together from sustained periods of concentration or devotion, purposely induced thoughts and lines of reasoning conjured up to counter what I knew was unwholesome, lying in bed staring at the tree branches outside my window, etc. The 28-day program, I hope, will provide a glimpse of what I might be missing and perhaps an opportunity to resuscitate a regular sitting practice.
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Buddha Buzz: Chinese New Year and Death Cafes
Chinese New Year this year falls on Sunday, February 10. It's the year of the black water snake. If you're celebrating (and hey, even if you're not), a very happy new year to you!
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Meditation Month: Guided Body Scan Meditation
It's Meditation Month here at Tricycle! That means it's time to join the Tricycle staff in making the commitment to sit every day of February—no exceptions and no excuses. We're blogging our triumphs and tribulations here on the Trike blog and at Vipassana teacher Sharon Salzberg's "Real Happiness" website throughout the month. We'll also be sharing videos, audio interviews, articles, and tips from well-known Buddhist teachers that will help you develop and maintain a meditation practice.
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Himalayan Buddhist Art 101: Black Ground Paintings
Buddhist practice and Buddhist art have been inseparable in the Himalayas ever since Buddhism arrived to the region in the eighth century. But for the casual observer it can be difficult to make sense of the complex iconography. Not to worry—Himalayan art scholar Jeff Watt is here to help. In this "Himalayan Buddhist Art 101" series, Jeff is making sense of this rich artistic tradition by presenting weekly images from the Himalayan Art Resources archives and explaining their roles in the Buddhist tradition.
Himalayan Buddhist Art 101: Black Ground Paintings
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Meditation Month, Day 7: Thanking my Suffering
This past weekend, I told my friends when it was over, will hereby be known as The Weekend of the Unfortunate Decisions. It was a series of choices so emotionally masochistic that they deserve to be capitalized, bolded, and forever flagged in my memory's archives as "Things I Should Never, Ever Do Again."The emotional stress of this behavior led to a low but persistent hum of anxiety that vibrated through my body without rest for days. Because I was anxious, I forgot to eat. I couldn't sleep. Meanwhile, I was exercising like mad in a misguided effort to purge the tension from my system. So I can hardly claim surprise when my body shut down on me on Sunday night, and I was left, anxiety-ridden and sleep-deprived, to deal with a very bad case of low blood sugar, a fever, and a panic attack entirely of my own making.
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When the Iron Bird Flies: An Interview with Director Victress Hitchcock
In her documentary When the Iron Bird Flies, now showing at the Tricycle Film Club through the month of February, director Victress Hitchcock follows the journey of Tibetan Buddhism from its past seclusion in the Land of Snows to its current (almost) mainstream status in the West. The film explores a pressing question as Tibetan Buddhism's influence grows worldwide: In these incredibly chaotic, modern times, can these age old teachings help us find genuine happiness—and create a saner, more compassionate 21st century world?
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The Real Stuff—Sitting with Pain
The author of this guest post, Cator Shachoy, founder of the nonprofit organization Youth Yoga Dharma, is currently leading a Tricycle community discussion about dealing with pain that arises during meditation. Join in on the discussion here.
The Real Stuff—Sitting with Pain
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Meditation Month, Day 5: Scattered, But Gathering
I am new to meditating, but have read a decent amount of literature and have had the good fortune to meet a lot of teachers who have spoke very eloquently and convincingly about its benefits—so when the Meditation Challenge started I was very excited to commit to integrating it into my daily routine.
But how easy I found it to avoid or reason away just sitting down and doing it! Given, I have just moved into a new apartment which definitely is a consuming and demanding activity, but still, what is just 20-30 minutes?
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Treasury of Lives: Machik Labdron
Biography and autobiography in Tibet are important sources for both education and inspiration. Tibetans have kept such meticulous records of their teachers that thousands of names are known and discussed in a wide range of biographical material. All these names, all these lives—it can be a little overwhelming. The authors involved in the Treasury of Lives are currently mining the primary sources to provide English-language biographies of every known religious teacher from Tibet and the Himalaya, all of which are organized for easy searching and browsing. Every Tuesday on the Tricycle blog, we will highlight and reflect on important, interesting, eccentric, surprising and beautiful stories found within this rich literary tradition.
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Meditation Month, Day 4: The Perfect Sit
This is my third year participating in the 28-day commit to sit, and each year I’m reminded that the conditions for integrating a daily practice into my life are never “perfect.” There’s always some challenge, some distraction, that gets in the way of what I had hoped would be four weeks chock-full of blissful moments of peace and tranquility.
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New Online Retreat: Real Happiness: A 28-Day Meditation Challenge
February is Meditation Month here at Tricycle. As we embark upon our 28-day meditation challenge, our new retreat with renowned meditation teacher and co-founder of Insight Meditation Society, Sharon Salzberg, is a great way for beginners to get started and for veterans to renew their practice.
In this first week's retreat, "Concentration," which is available for all to watch, Sharon discusses how common it is for our minds to become scattered and subject to all kinds of distraction. The practice of concentration, or as she calls it, of "gathering," can result in a sense of empowerment and feelings of integration and presence.
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Buddha Buzz: A Columbia Professor and a Death Row Inmate
Not to be outdone by Burma's shocking level of prejudice against Muslims, a group of Sinhalese Buddhist monastics known as the "Buddhist Force" is campaigning to ban halal meat in Sri Lanka amidst attacks on Muslim-owned businesses and other violence. The Sinhalese president has urged the monks to maintain religious harmony within the country, especially since the nation's civil war with the Hindu Tamil Tigers ended only four years ago.
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Meditation Month Begins Today!
It might not say this on your desk calendars, but it's Meditation Month here at Tricycle! That means that starting today, it's time to join the Tricycle staff in making the commitment to sit every day of February—no exceptions and no excuses. We'll be blogging our triumphs and tribulations here and at Vipassana teacher Sharon Salzberg's "Real Happiness" website throughout the month. We'll also be sharing videos, audio interviews, articles, and tips from well-known Buddhist teachers that will help you develop and maintain a meditation practice. To start things off, you can download last year's Meditation Month e-book, Tricycle Teachings: Meditation, here.
Beginning Monday, February 4, you'll be able to:
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