Publisher of books and audio that bring wisdom to life—since 1969. Free shipping on orders of $35 or more on Shambhala.com!
Concentration (dhyana) |
The meditation practice of focusing the mind uninterruptedly upon an object |
-
4 comments
Sex, Sin, and Zen
Brad Warner is known around the Buddhist world as the proprietor of the rollicking blog Hardcore Zen (hardcorezen.blogspot.com), and a contributor to the alternative adult site Suicide Girls (suicidegirls.com), as well as the author of irreverent and very personal books about Zen practice, most recently Sex, Sin, and Zen. More » -
2 comments
Focusing
For most of us, don’t-know is a place of get-me-out-of-here-quick. As a writer, sitting down to a blank page makes me instantly want to wash dishes, dust under beds, or finally sew those buttons on a coat I haven’t worn in years. But Eugene Gendlin doesn’t see don’t-know as the Bermuda Triangle of the psyche; to him it is just unexplored frontier, seas as yet uncharted—but friendly—that we can learn to navigate. For years, Gendlin offered a class at the University of Chicago in which he taught exactly that. The purpose of the class was to get students to tap into their implicit knowing—Gendlin’s term for what someone knows but is not yet able to express. “It took weeks to explain that the usual criteria were reversed in my course,” Gendlin says. Everywhere else in the university only what was clear counted at all, he explains. More » -
4 comments
When It Happens to Us
This is a fact of life; we don't like pain. We suffer because we marry our instinctive aversion to pain to the deep-seated belief that life should be free from pain. In resisting our pain by holding this belief, we strengthen just what we're trying to avoid. When we make pain the enemy, we solidify it. This resistance is where our suffering begins. More » -
Meditation, Mental Habits, and Creative Imagination
We have to be careful not to think that meditation is about getting rid of thoughts. On the contrary, I would say that meditation helps us to creatively engage with our thoughts and not fixate on them. When people say they cannot concentrate, I say, “No, no, no! You are concentrating—too much on any one thought!”It is interesting in meditation to notice all the different places where our thoughts lead us—what distracts us and what occupies our minds. It is important to notice these things in meditation because these will be the same things that occupy our minds in daily life. As we become more familiar with our thoughts in meditation, we will see how repetitive our thoughts are. We often think very similar things over and over again and it is actually rare to have what I would call a creative, original thought. More » -
Brown Rice Is Just Right
How do you like zazen? I think it may be better to ask, how do you like brown rice? Zazen is too big a topic. Brown rice is just right. Actually, there is not much difference. When you eat brown rice, you have to chew it, and unless you chew it, it is difficult to swallow. When you chew it very well, your mouth becomes part of the kitchen, and actually the brown rice becomes more and more tasty. When we eat white rice, we don’t chew so much, but that little bit of chewing feels so good that naturally the rice goes right down our throats. More » -
Emptiness: All or Nothing
The idea of sunyata (Pali sunnata) or emptiness has been variously understood—and misunderstood—for centuries. Joan Konner's recent book, "You Don't Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing," gathers together the thoughts of philosophers, poets, and pundits, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, on nothing, emptiness, sunyata. Some examples: "The nothing is the force whereby the something can be manifested." - Alan Watts "Poetry makes nothing happen." - W.H. Auden "Nothing is exciting, nothing is sexy, nothing is not embarrassing." - Andy Warhol More »
