You may have wondered where Wildmind’s news stories have gone. By way of background, since around 2002 we’ve been looking out for stories in the media that feature meditation, and posting them in our blog. Mostly we’ve posted extracts with a link to the original source.

Just today, however, we became aware of a dangerous new practice that’s affecting blogs that post news stories. Wired revealed that a company called Righthaven has purchased the rights to the news stories … Click to read more »

“Meditation helps us to cut through the agonizing clutter of superficial mental turmoil and allows us to experience more spacious and joyful states of mind. It is this pure and luminous state that I call your Wildmind.”

The second edition of my book, Wildmind, is coming out in July (August in the US). Joseph Goldstein, author of Insight Meditation: The … Click to read more »

I have sympathy for the Christian woman who is protesting the decorative Buddha statues that are being used in her father’s nursing home.

If I was staying in a non-religious nursing home, I would not be comfortable being surrounded by crucifixes, or statues of Christ or the Virgin Mary. If it was a religious nursing home, then fine, but it seems inappropriate to have religious displays used in non-religious settings.

The … Click to read more »

Wildmind offers four online courses on meditation.

Starting March 29, 2010:

• The Path of Mindfulness and Love (4 weeks)
• Change Your Mind (4 weeks)
• Awakening the Heart (4 weeks)
• Entering the Path of Insight (4 weeks)

More information about all of our courses is available on Wildmind.

Wildmind offers four online courses on meditation.

Starting March 1, 2010:

• The Path of Mindfulness and Love (4 weeks)
• Change Your Mind (4 weeks)
• Awakening the Heart (4 weeks)
• Entering the Path of Insight (4 weeks)

More information about all of our courses is available on Wildmind.

Wildmind offers four online courses on meditation.

Starting Jan 4, 2009:

• The Path of Mindfulness and Love (4 weeks)
• Change Your Mind (4 weeks)
• Awakening the Heart (4 weeks)
• Entering the Path of Insight (4 weeks)

More information about all of our courses is available on Wildmind.

Our good friends at the Triratna Buddhist Community’s San Francisco center are holding a winter meditation retreat. The annual winter meditation immersion retreat is held in silence, simplicity and spaciousness among the magical redwoods and madrones of the Santa Cruz mountains.

The program offers sustained periods of sitting and walking meditation, periods of instruction and guidance and the experience of living with a like-minded community of those curious to go deeper into … Click to read more »

National Public Radio: “More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality … Click to read more »

Wildmind’s monthly newsletter goes out tomorrow at 11:00 EST. It offers articles on the theme of “Solitude” by Kulananda, Sunada, and Bodhipaksa. Kulananda writes about a pilgrimage to an Irish island where hardy monks lived lives of intense spirituality for 600 years.

Sunada reflects on being an introvert in a world of extroverts, and how that’s a good thing! Lots of encouragement there for you “I”s. Bodhipaksa takes a quote by French thinker … Click to read more »

Wildmind offers a range of online courses on meditation, practice in daily life, and Buddhism.

Starting November 3, 2008:

• The Path of Mindfulness and Love (4 weeks)
• Change Your Mind (4 weeks)
• Awakening the Heart (4 weeks)
• Entering the Path of Insight (4 weeks)

More information about all of our courses is available on Wildmind.

Scientific American editor Christie Nicholson reports on meditation and the phenomenon known as “attentional blink” from possibly the most distracting place on Earth, New York’s Times Square.

In this video podcast she discusses research by Dr. David Richardson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, that shows how “letting go” through practicing mindfulness meditation helps us to deal with over-stimulation and to pay attention when things get hectic.

Human Rights Watch has called on the Cambodian government to ensure the safety of Buddhist monks whom police attacked during a peaceful protest.

Last week, riot police assaulted a group of 47 Khmer Krom Buddhist monks — indigenous ethnic Khmer from southern Vietnam — when they attempted to deliver a petition protesting the imprisonment of monks in Vietnam to the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh Police Commissioner Touch … Click to read more »

Miami and Ohio State university researchers are using an ancient technique to investigate the impact of Tibetan meditation on victims of post-traumatic stress disorder.

With a $98,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Deborah Akers, Miami visiting assistant professor of anthropology, is working with co-researchers from Ohio State on a project titled “Treatment of Trauma Survivors: Effects of Meditation Practice on Clients’ Mental Health Outcomes.”

Akers and co-researchers Moyee Lee, professor of social … Click to read more »

Mounting credit card bills, snowy commutes, crowded stores — the holiday season can often bring tidings of stress and frustration. But a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Toronto has found that mindfulness meditation helps people brush off unpleasant feelings and stay focused on the task at hand.

Professor Philip Zelazo in the Institute of Child Development, along with Dr. Catherine Ortner from the University of Toronto and meditation instructor … Click to read more »

We take a look at the ten highest-rated meditation articles from the social news site, Digg.com, where users submit and vote on articles.

These days the fastest-growing and most exciting parts of the web are based on user-generated content — a phenomenon known as Web 2.0. Rather than just consuming other people’s online offerings we’re now sharing photographs on Flickr, voting for videos on YouTube, and leaving comments on innumerable blogs (including this … Click to read more »

Meditation can help improve symptoms in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Dr. Ramesh Manocha told the World Psychiatric Association conference in Melbourne, Australia this week.

The Australia-based study in 48 children aged under 12 diagnosed with ADHD found that meditation led to an average 35% reduction in symptom severity over six weeks, and enabled many to reduce their medication.

Improvements occurred in behavior, self-esteem levels of anxiety, and in sleeping patterns.

Children said they … Click to read more »

Jim Carrey, the US actor, has issued a video appeal, urging people to email the Secretary General of the United Nations, asking for a “strong response” from the UN to the current crisis in Burma. Watch below:

The peaceful pro-democracy uprising led by Buddhist monks in Burma (Myanmar) came to a head as the military dictatorship’s troops attacked monks and lay supporters.

Government security forces cracked down for a second day on nationwide protests, firing shots and tear gas, and raiding at least two Buddhist monasteries, where they beat and arrested dozens of monks, according to reports from the city of Yangon.

The government of Myanmar began a violent crackdown … Click to read more »

The New York Times has, from a contact in prison, managed to get hold of the lists of 150 government-approved titles for the various religious traditions.

The news for Buddhist inmates is bad. The list supplied by the NYT (PDF) lacks any serious scriptural works such as the Dhammapada, does not even come close to the touted 150 titles, contains many repeated titles, and even contains a few non-Buddhist works!

One thing to be noted is that the various Christian … Click to read more »

As part of the ongoing response to 9/11, inmates in Federal Prisons are now finding their access to religious books severely curtailed. The Department of Justice doesn’t want literature advocating violence to get into the hands of prisoners, but the sledgehammer being used to crack that particular nut has been a wholesale clear-out of prison libraries.

The Bureau wishes to bar access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

Only 150 … Click to read more »