The Buddha’s teachings are a vast wealth of knowledge for pacifying and eliminating our suffering, but in the beginning it can be difficult to know how to put this wisdom into practice. Even after years of trying to incorporate meditation into your life, you may still feel like you’re not progressing as much as you had hoped. The good news is that the Buddha’s teachings can all be broken down into simple and clear practices to help you make the changes you so desperately seek. (more…)
What changes would you like to see in your meditation practice in the New Year (if any)? Perhaps you might want to make your practice more consistent, make your sessions longer (or even shorter and more concentrated). Maybe you simply need to start a daily/weekly practice?
You don’t need to be a yogi to reap the benefits of meditation. Just 10 – 20 minutes a day can have a tremendous impact on your inner health and wellbeing. (more…)
Most Dharma centers these days offer people the chance to deepen their meditation practice by offering retreats, anywhere from one day to a few months in duration. For many of us, even to take one day out of our lives to attend a retreat can be difficult, but the benefits are lasting and well worth making the effort to attend.
When I first started practicing meditation, I originally started with just 10-20 minutes a day; slowly working my way up to one-hour sessions. As I continued to read and became more inspired, I began doing semi-retreats at home on the weekend. I would practice noble silence and do up to seven hours meditation on the Saturday (breaking up my sessions with 45 minutes Shamatha meditation and 15 minutes walking meditation). Then on the Sunday I would attend my local center’s Sunday morning session and come home and do more practice. (more…)
Walking meditation is a great practice for those of us who experience pain or discomfort when doing sitting meditation. At full day retreats, it is common to interchange sitting and walking meditation so that one hour sitting meditation is followed by half an hour walking meditation. Walking meditation can increase our concentration and mindfulness especially when our mind is extremely distracted or agitated. In this video I give some simple instructions on my favorite walking meditation technique and I explain the benefits of practicing walking meditation in general. (more…)
In August last year I was invited to be part of a panel of mindfulness experts discussing the topic of mindfulness and intention. The event was organized by The Chopra Well and hosted by Mallika Chopra (daughter of the well-known spiritual teacher, Deepak Chopra). The panel was conducted via Google+ Hangouts. (more…)
My journey into Buddhism has been an unexpected and exciting one. If someone had told me when I was fourteen what I was going to do before my 30th birthday, I would have called them insane. But at the same time I would have sat in wonder at the adventures I was going to have and I would have been unimaginably excited about the years following my 27th birthday. In this brief video, which was originally created to promote my YouTube channel, I provide you with a snippet of my life and what led me into Buddhism. (more…)
