Join a Global Community Focused on Mindful and Compassionate Living
Wildmind is an online meditation center — a place where anyone can learn to meditate or deepen their existing practice.
Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. We're supported by a community of sponsors, who receive many benefits, including:
- Access to all of Bodhipaksa's past online meditation courses, of which there are currently around 30.
- A monthly newsletter that's just for sponsors, containing an exclusive article and a meditation download.
- An online sponsors' forum where you can share your practice and get feedback, support, and encouragement.
- Free access to any new meditation courses that Bodhipaksa develops through Wildmind.
You can get all this by sponsoring one or more Community Shares. These are only $6 a month each, which makes the benefits you receive a tremendous bargain. More than 90% of our Community Shares are already sponsored. Make sure you don't miss out by sponsoring one or more shares today!
Check Out Recent Posts on Wildmind's Blog
The Dalai Lama, Reefer Madness, kaiju, and more!
What does his Holiness the Dalai Lama have to do with moral panics over “marihuana,” a backwoodsman becoming an unlikely political hero, noir skulduggery in wartime San Francisco, Ronald Reagan, a resurrected Egyptian mummy, and a giant reptile terrorizing Japan? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Several years ago, someone told me about a…
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A meditation for accepting aging
An elderly friend of mine once said to me, “Aging isn’t for sissies.” She was talking mainly about the physical difficulties of getting older, and especially the aches, pains, and difficulty in doing things that were formerly easy. To add insult to injury, though, we often feel critical about our appearance as we age, as…
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Is Sati-AI, the “non-human mindfulness meditation teacher,” even a real thing?
I’ve written about so-called Artificial Intelligence here a few times recently. I say “so-called” because these computer algorithms don’t have sentience. They’re statistical models that combine words and concepts in ways that reflect and mimic how humans communicate in writing, but they have no understanding of the world we live in. This morning a Mastodon…
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The Fourth Noble Truth — the Eightfold Path
Introduction The Eightfold Path is the fourth of the Buddha’s Noble Truths, and he described it as the way that leads to the uprooting of the causes of suffering, and thus to increasingly stable and profound peacefulness, wisdom, virtue, and happiness. Each of the eight elements of this Path is described by a word that…
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More adventures with artificial intelligence
Recently I shared a conversation I had with ChatGPT, a supposed Artificial Intelligence. ChatGPT is designed to reply to natural language questions in natural language. It does precisely that, using a vast body of information it’s been fed. When I asked CHatGPT about the benefits of meditation, and the various kinds of meditation practice available,…
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What the heck is “the unconditioned”?
I often hear Buddhists talking about “the unconditioned.” I’m extremely suspicious of this expression. In fact think it’s positively unhelpful, in that brings about a sense that Enlightenment is something that happens far, far away. “The unconditioned” becomes a sort of mystical realm — some kind of mysterious entity or metaphysical reality. Sometimes people call…
Read MoreTry Out the Bodhi Mind Meditation App
The Bodhi Mind meditation app—for iPhone and iPad—gives you access to more than 200 guided meditations, recorded by Bodhipaksa, the founder of Wildmind.
The Bodhi Mind app available for download on the app store.
You’ll find all the guided meditations from Bodhipaksa's CDs and meditation courses, plus materials that he's recorded for other purposes. Some live recordings from retreats and workshops have been added, with more on the way!
The app is free to download.
All of the meditations are available for a two week trial. After that you’ll have access to a selection of tracks, and you can unlock the rest by signing up for a subscription.
Recommended Posts From Wildmind's Blog
Seven tips for people who struggle with lovingkindness practice
In the tradition I practice in, lovingkindness (metta bhavana) and mindfulness meditation are considered equally important, and yet my own informal surveys suggest that about a third of long-term practitioners have essentially given up on lovingkindness practice, doing it hardly at all, or skipping it altogether. Often people have problems with the first stage, which…
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From shame to self-worth: the spectrum of shame
Shame is a very primal emotion, one that has a lot of traction in the mind. As we grow up, from infants to adults, shame elaborates many nuances, like the branches and twigs growing from a single trunk. Let’s consider four common sources of shame spectrum feelings. 1. Needs Not Being Acknowledged First, consider a…
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Meditating with tinnitus
If you suffer from tinnitus – persistent ringing in the ears – you may wonder whether meditation is a good idea. And yet it can be a powerful tool in helping you come to terms with the white noise inside your head. Meditator and long-time tinnitus sufferer Mandy Sutter airs some of the issues. Tinnitus…
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Practice when life gets tough
Sometimes life comes at us full force and overwhelms us. That’s what happened to me the last few months. Things happened that were so overpowering that all my usual routines went out the window just so I could get through each day. My work, my social life – and yes, my sitting practice – pretty…
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G.K. Chesterton: “The true object of all human life is play.”
The bodhisattva moves through life elegantly, “in the zone” and in a state of playful “flow,” and he can do this because he has abandoned any clinging to the idea of self. “Let go of your sense of self; you have nothing to lose but your suffering,” Bodhipaksa tells us. I think Chesterton was absolutely…
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Debunking seven myths about the Buddha
Some of the misconceptions about the Buddha are so common that you’ll find them in just about every book on Buddhism. The problem is that most of these books are merely rehashes of other books on Buddhism, so that misconceptions get passed on for decades and even centuries. So here I’d like to debunk some…
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The sacred pause
In our lives we often find ourselves in situations we can’t control, circumstances in which none of our strategies work. Helpless and distraught, we frantically try to manage what is happening. Our child takes a downward turn in academics and we issue one threat after another to get him in line. Someone says something hurtful…
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Four reasons Buddhists can love evolution
Evolution — at least in the United States — has a deeply troubled relationship with religion. Or at least it does with some religions. As you can see from the Pew Trust chart below, Buddhists on the whole (81% of them) think that evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on…
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“To believe in the heroic makes heroes” Benjamin Disraeli
In the Path of Freedom, a 1st century meditation manual that I’ve mentioned a few times because it’s the earliest source I know of for cultivating lovingkindness and compassions in stages, we’re asked first of all to connect with mudita (appreciation) in the following way: When one sees or hears that some person’s qualities are…
Read MoreExplore the most 20 popular topics on Wildmind's blog
Mindfulness · Science and Meditation · Meditation and Health · Benefits of Meditation · Mindfulness in Daily Life · Meditation for Stress · Neuroscience of Meditation · Spiritual Practice and Happiness · Meditation and Compassion · Psychology and Meditation · Meditation for Children · Meditation for Anxiety · Buddhism · Lovingkindness Practice · Meditation and Education · The Dalai Lama · Meditation at Work · Meditation and Brain Science · Self-Compassion · 100 Days of Lovingkindness
About Buddhist meditation
In a way there's nothing very "Buddhist" about the meditation you'll find on Wildmind. When you pay attention to your breath, or to the sensations in your body as you walk, or when you cultivate feelings of love for another person, you won't have a sense that you're doing anything very "religious." In a way these are simply "human" meditation practices -- ways that a human being can pay attention to his or her own experience, and gently cultivate greater awareness and love.
The simplest form of meditation we teach here is mindfulness of breathing. The essence of this practice is that we simply bring our attention to the sensations of the breathing, and when the mind wanders, as it will, we gently steer it back to the breath once again. However in the form we teach here, there are four stages, each of which has a specific purpose in helping us to develop calmness, energy, continuity of awareness, or one-pointedness.
The other main form of meditation that we teach is the cultivation of lovingkindness, in which we take responsibility for our emotions, and encourage the development of qualities of empathy, patience, kindness, and compassion.
We also teach you how to set up your meditation posture (an essential consideration in any form of meditation practice), as well as walking meditation.
And outside of these structured guides to meditation, we have a blog with a vast collection of news stories about meditation, articles on practice, and reviews of books, CDS, and videos.
About Buddhist meditation
In a way there's nothing very "Buddhist" about the meditation you'll find on Wildmind. When you pay attention to your breath, or to the sensations in your body as you walk, or when you cultivate feelings of love for another person, you won't have a sense that you're doing anything very "religious." In a way these are simply "human" meditation practices -- ways that a human being can pay attention to his or her own experience, and gently cultivate greater awareness and love.
The simplest form of meditation we teach here is mindfulness of breathing. The essence of this practice is that we simply bring our attention to the sensations of the breathing, and when the mind wanders, as it will, we gently steer it back to the breath once again. However in the form we teach here, there are four stages, each of which has a specific purpose in helping us to develop calmness, energy, continuity of awareness, or one-pointedness.
The other main form of meditation that we teach is the cultivation of lovingkindness, in which we take responsibility for our emotions, and encourage the development of qualities of empathy, patience, kindness, and compassion.
We also teach you how to set up your meditation posture (an essential consideration in any form of meditation practice), as well as walking meditation.
And outside of these structured guides to meditation, we have a blog with a vast collection of news stories about meditation, articles on practice, and reviews of books, CDS, and videos.
About the meditation practices you can learn on this site
Our Posture Workshop
Our posture workshop is where we suggest you start if you don't already have a meditation practice (and perhaps even if you do). We'll take you step-by-step through the process of setting up a meditation posture that will allow you to be both alert and relaxed.
The mindfulness of breathing
The mindfulness of breathing is a fundamental meditation practice that everyone should know. The benefits? You'll find that this practice helps you to calm your mind so that there's less inner chatter (especially the stuff that makes you unhappy). You'll find also that you're less distractible and better able to pay attention.
The development of lovingkindness
The development of lovingkindness (metta bhavana) works directly on our emotional habits, helping us to become more emotionally positive. You'll learn to be kinder to yourself: more patient, more understanding. You'll find that you're more considerate to others and that it's easier to forgive. You may even find (as others have) that others around you mysteriously become easier to be around. Hmmm.. wonder why that is?
Walking meditation
Walking meditation is a great way to bring more meditation into your daily life; it's a practice that can be done even in a busy city street. In this form of practice we develop greater mindfulness of the body, but we also become more aware of our thought patterns, our emotions, and even of the outside world. It's a calming practice. Walking meditation can also be a lovingkindness practice, especially when you're walking in a public place.
Mantra meditation
Our mantra meditation section is the most popular destination for our visitors. Mantras are simply phrases that we repeat (usually internally, but they can also be chanted out loud). As well as occupying the mind and thus calming it by preventing it from getting up to the usual mischief that causes us pain, mantras also have a symbolic value that evokes spiritual qualities.
The six element practice
The six element practice is a profound reflection on interconnectedness and impermanence. It's a very beautiful form of meditation. It not only helps us to calm the mind and give us a reassuring sense of our place in the great scheme of things, but it can be unsettling and challenging as well. Yes, I know. Reassuring and unsettling. That's Buddhist practice for you!