The Meditative Mind is an updated version of a book Daniel Goleman first published in the 1970s and revised in the 1980s. Goleman, who’s famous for his classic, Emotional Intelligence, was in on the first wave of research into the effects of meditation, having made a visit to India and having met some impressive yogis before returning to Harvard. Goleman has been ahead of the curve for a long time. This earlier parts of this book, he points out, first appeared at a time when the links between traditional Asian systems of mental training and modern psychological science were few and far between. They are of course far more …

Another Greco-Indian statue from Gandhara.

Notice the beautiful carved base, which itself contains three Buddha figures along with attendants.

I took this detail of a Tibetan Thangka painting on my iPhone at the Seattle Buddhist Center just before doing a workshop on the Satipatthana Sutta with the men’s sangha there tonight.

Last night I gave a talk and led a meditation at the Buddha Day celebrations, where we commemorate the Buddha’s enlightenment.

I snapped this on my iPhone yesterday at Seattle’s Asian Art Museum. The pose and style of the statue look Greco-Roman because they are. It’s a Gandharan statue of the Buddha before his enlightenment. Gandhara, now in Pakistan, was in the Classical Greek sphere of interest, and it’s where the first Buddha images were made.

As I arrived at work today, the signmakers were just starting to hang Wildmind’s new sign outside of the mill building that we moved into back in February. We’re very pleased with the way it looks.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

From “Anthem,” by Leonard Cohen.

The UK’s Daily Mail has a collection of photographs of this meditating lemur, taken by Belgian-born amateur photographer Sebastian Degardin, who lives in Finchley, north London.

The photographs were taken on a forest path in a nature park in Mons, Belgium.

Check out the rest of the pics here.

I wonder what kind of “meditation” Anders Breivik — who shot 69 people on an island in Norway last year, as well as killing another eight with a bomb — was doing?

According to this report,

When prosecutors Friday asked Breivik whether he felt empathy for others, the killer said he taught himself to dull all emotions – “from happiness to sorrow, despair, hopelessness, anxiety, fear” through meditation.

It’s possible that Breivik was not doing anything resembling traditional Buddhist meditation, which encourages compassion and non-repression of emotions. I’d be 100 confident that Breivik was not practicing lovingkindness or compassion meditation!

Traditionally, meditation is only one part of the spiritual path, and it’s accompanied with …

Kate Crisp, director of the Prison Dharma Network, has done us great favor by downloading and testing 20 or so mindfulness apps for iPad or iPhone. Check out her review here.