Wildmind's meditation blog
Wildmind's blogs are where you'll find book reviews, commentary, podcasts, and articles that don't fit neatly into the more structured guides to meditation that you'll find on the main part of the site. Articles are arranged below by date, and you can also browse by author and category using the links on the left.
Meditation matters: does meditation work?
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Keep the Doctor Away: Whatever the cause, stress is all too often the outcome of living our daily lives. But, when we think that the world has gone plain bonkers, can meditation help to keep us reasonably sane? Read more here.
Meditation combats everyday stresses
Female First: The method of meditation has been practised for hundreds of years and the health and social benefits are doubtless. Meditation classes are designed to calm the mind and gain clarity and perspective and once you’ve mastered the basics the methods are entirely transferable to everyday life. Read more here.
Mysticism: where the dharma rubber hits the road
In Sunada’s view, mysticism isn’t about indulging in out-of-body experiences as a way of escaping the world. It’s about meeting the world head-on and learning directly from it. It’s about as practical as it gets.
If you’ve been reading my blog articles for a while, you may have gathered by now that I’m a rather down-to-earth sort of practitioner, with a keen interest in how meditation and Buddhist practice interplays with our practical … Click to read more »
Meditation-in-schools tour for David Lynch
Newsday: In recent years, as he learned more about increasingly stressed-out children and violent schools, David Lynch felt he might be able to help by bringing Transcendental Meditation to schools. Schools have tried many, many, many things and nothing on the surface is working,” Lynch says from his office in Los Angeles. “But when a student or a teacher truly transcends and experiences this deepest level of life, watch what happens. It transforms the schools. It transforms the kids… . … Click to read more »
“Gesture of Awareness,” by Charles Genoud
How useful are books, really, in stimulating spiritual realization, when such realization must be grounded in experience? Paramananda takes a skeptical — yet appreciative — look at a new book attempting to pointing the way to non-duality.
It seems a little ironic that I find myself in two minds about Genoud’s book — ironic because this slim volume is all about “being” in one mind. It is not that I … Click to read more »
Ask Auntie Suvanna: the Buddhist approach to excess body hair
Ever despair at how to cultivate lovingkindness for Dick Cheney, or ponder the effect of anti-depressants on Buddha Nature? If so, check out Auntie Suvanna, who applies her unique wisdom and wit to your queries about life, meditation, Dharma, family and relationship issues, or anything else that comes up.
Dear Auntie,
I can’t stand my boyfriend’s ear hair anymore. He has little pointy gray hairs growing out of the tops of his ears. … Click to read more »
David Brazier: Mysticism and action
When we meditate we withdraw the senses from the world and step back from activity. Does this mean that meditative practice is escapist? Are meditative experience and engagement with the world mutually contradictory? David Brazier, Zen teacher and author, examines the false dichotomy of mysticism and engagement.
Mysticism and action need each other. After his enlightenment, the Buddha did not retire to a cave or commit suicide. He went forth and for forty more … Click to read more »
Meditation technique can lower blood pressure
Reuters: Practicing a particular type of meditation twice a day can significantly reduce blood pressure, according to an analysis of existing research on the technique. The blood pressure reductions associated with regular practice of transcendental meditation, or TM, would translate to a 12-15 percent reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular causes and a 15-20 percent lower risk of stroke, according Dr. James W. Anderson, the study’s lead author. Read more here.
Tibetans in exile show high rates of depression
New Scientist: A survey finds that refugees fleeing Tibet have higher levels of depression and anxiety than Tibetans born and raised in relatively stable exile communities in India and Nepal. But even Tibetans born in exile have questionnaire scores that classify them as “depressed”. “The results highlight the cost of the ongoing human-rights crisis within Tibet in human emotional suffering,” says lead researcher Charles Raison, from the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, … Click to read more »
Freedom in prison
The New York Times: The teachings of the Buddha infiltrate a maximum-security prison in “The Dhamma Brothers,” a thinking-head documentary about finding answers within for those who can’t get out.
Visit the film’s web site and view a trailer here.
Filmed in 2002 at the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Ala., one of the most violent prisons in North America, this provocative film follows a small group of inmates through … Click to read more »
Through meditation, Charles Halpern strives for justice
The Buffalo News: As a longtime practitioner of meditation, Charles Halpern heads the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, which attempts to introduce meditation into universities and other institutions. Halpern leads workshops for attorneys and judges to teach them to slow down rather than to speed up, to look inward as well as outward. Read more here.
Aldous Huxley: “Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle…”
If meditation practice leads to the cessation of desire, then how are we to pursue spiritual goals? Are there good and bad kinds of desire? Can desire be spiritually helpful? Bodhipaksa explores a saying by Aldous Huxley in an attempt to shed some light.
“Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, … Click to read more »
Olympic torch relay marked by protests
World attention continues to be focused on human rights abuses in Tibet. The relay of the Olympic torch from Greece to China has been marked by protests in London and Paris. An estimated 10,000 protesters gathered in San Francisco, although the protests may have been subdued by the rerouting of the torch relay at the last minute, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Despite the ongoing protests, the Assembly of National Olympic Committees … Click to read more »
Mixing meditation, yoga, and money management
US News and World Report: Brent Kessel, cofounder of investment firm Abacus Portfolios, isn’t your typical money manager. He wakes up around 5 a.m. to meditate for 45 minutes and then practices yoga for an hour and a half before making his way to his desk. In his new book, It’s Not About the Money: Unlock Your Money Type to Achieve Spiritual and Financial Abundance, Kessel, 40, combines his wealth management expertise with his yoga … Click to read more »
Faith: credible mystery
Examining the place of faith in Buddhism, Nagapriya outlines why it is a crucial tool for understanding
“For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but believe so that I may understand. For this too I believe: that unless I shall have believed, I may not understand.”
For St Anselm, belief or faith was the starting point from which his spiritual inquiry began, the foundation upon which it rested, not … Click to read more »
Use meditation to improve your health
Quad City Times: Meditation is used by some medical professionals because it appears to have long-term benefits as far as emotional and physical well-being is concerned. It tends to ease conditions that are worsened by stress, including allergies, arthritis, cancer, chronic pain, heart disease and depression. Read more here.
A not-so-fine romance
Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times: In the aftermath of the Tibet upheavals, the complicated romance between America and China is degenerating into mutual recriminations, muttering about Olympic boycotts and tensions that are likely to rise through the summer.
It would be convenient if we could simply denounce the crackdown in Tibet as the unpopular action of a dictatorial government. But it wasn’t. It was the popular action of a dictatorial government, … Click to read more »
Lakers needed work on inside game
Los Angeles Times: The Los Angeles Lakers are back on a winning track. Maybe there will be more deep breathing and introspection at their practices. Jackson put them through a meditation session at Sunday’s shoot-around, and that night they ended two-game skid. Read more here.
Scientists probe meditation secrets
BBC: Scientists are beginning to uncover evidence that meditation has a tangible effect on the brain. Although sceptics argue that it is not a practical way to try to deal with the stresses of modern life, the long years when adherents were unable to point to hard science to support their belief in the technique may finally be coming to an end. Read more here.
Ask Auntie Suvanna: On loving Dick Cheney
Ever despair at how to cultivate lovingkindness for Dick Cheney, or ponder the effect of anti-depressants on Buddha Nature? If so, check out Auntie Suvanna, who applies her unique wisdom and wit to your queries about life, meditation, Dharma, family and relationship issues, or anything else that comes up. Why not write to her and tell her your troubles? They don’t have to be Buddhist troubles - any … Click to read more »