Contemplative psychotherapy for individuals, couples, and groups in New York City.
special section |
-
0 comments
What Body?
What we call the body is not feet or shins, The body, likewise, is not thighs or loins. It's not the belly nor indeed the back, And from the chest and arms the body is not formed. The body is not ribs or hands, Armpits, shoulders, bowels, or entrails; It is not the head or throat: From none of these is "body" constituted. If "body," step by step,Pervades and spreads itself throughout its members,Its parts indeed are present in the parts, But where does the "body," in itself, abide! More » -
0 comments
The Other Side of Appearance
Antony Gormley is an acclaimed British artist whose sculpture has revolutionized the expression of the human body in art. He has gained particular recognition for making casts of his own body and manipulating them to challenge viewers' perceptions of space, identity, and time. A former student of the renowned Vipassana teacher S. N. Goenka's, Gormley found that his experience with meditation heightened his awareness of the body and influenced its expression in his work. More » -
Finding Sense in Sensation
The Buddha was the foremost scientist of mind and matter (nama and rupa). What makes him a peerless scientist is his discovery that tanha, or craving, and by extension, aversion—arises from vedana, or sensation on the body. Before the time of the Buddha, little if any importance was given to bodily sensation. In fact, it was the centrality of bodily sensation that was the Buddha’s great discovery in his quest to determine the root cause of suffering and the means to its cessation. Before the Buddha, India’s spiritual masters emphasized teachings that encouraged people to turn away from sensory objects and ignore the sensations that contact with them engenders. More » -
0 comments
One Fat Buddha
In Soto Zen centers, there’s a verse we chant every morning between the dawn sitting and the morning service. The robe that symbolizes the commitment to the Buddha’s way is unfolded from its pouch and placed on top of our heads before we intone, Vast is the robe of liberationA formless field of benefactionI wear the Tathagata teachingsSaving all sentient beings. On many mornings, I indulged my initial amusement at the absurdity of people sitting on their cushions with bundles of cloth piled on their heads. So much of dislocated Japanese Zen ritual can provoke a wince, with its bloodless and robotic pretensions. By contrast, this seemed sweetly—even innocently—kind of silly. More » -
0 comments
Yoga For Meditators
Who can say which comes first—a balanced body or a spacious mind? Science acknowledges that consciousness is not limited to the brain but is everywhere in the body. So the path to both steadiness and ease is consciously to unite body and mind. At the same time that yoga practice cultivates the physical stamina for meditation—that’s where we get the steadiness—the practice of meditative awareness brings about ease of mind and heart. More » -
0 comments
Living from the Inside Out
I fell in love with yoga sixteen years ago, when I was twenty-three. I was living with two massage students in an adobe cabin on the southern border of Santa Fe, out where the art galleries and million-dollar villas disintegrated into a tattered fringe of vacant lots and trailer-home parks. Our cabin smelled of mouse droppings, a comforting smell reminiscent of the gerbil cages in second-grade classrooms. There was a wood stove in the kitchen, and an abandoned chicken coop in the yard, and an enormous teepee out by the woodpile, where my roommates and I used to gather to bang on congas and rattle gourds while incanting visualizations of our futures: “If it is for my highest good,” we’d begin, “I create a reality in which . . .” More »
