Zen Mountain Monastery

To receive beginning instruction in zazen at the Monastery, come to the Sunday Morning Program or Wednesday Evening Zazen. All of our weekend retreats, including the Introduction to Zen Training Weekend, also include beginning instruction for newcomers. Zazen is the form of meditation at the very heart of Zen practice. In fact, Zen is known as the “meditation school” of Buddhism. Basically, zazen is the study of the self. The great Master Dogen said, “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.” We tend to see body, breath, and mind separately, but in zazen they come together as one reality. Burmese Position There are several different leg positions that are possible while seated cross-legged. Half Lotus Position Another position is the half lotus, where the left foot is placed up onto the right thigh and the right leg is tucked under. Full Lotus Position Seiza Position Related: Méditation / relaxation

Pema Chodron Foundation — Buddhist Monastic Life in the West - Gampo Abbey Autohypnosis Exercise 1 If you can't take a course from a reputable professional, you can begin using the following self-programming process. Fashion your suggestion. It must be positive, with no negative words. short, between 6 and 15 words. meaningful, this is what you really want to happen. possible, something you can achieve. The Second Exercise has a autohypnosis focal-point to play with. Stand on Mars Next to the Curiosity Rover With This Incredible Panorama | Wired Science Over the weekend, NASA’s Curiosity rover successfully drilled into the surface of Mars and collected its first sample from the interior of a rock. With this incredible interactive panorama, you can stand right beside the rover and see both its amazing environment and the fruits of its labor (go into full screen for best results). Late on Feb. 8, Curiosity drilled a 6.4-cm-deep hole into a rock nicknamed John Klein on the surface of Mars. The area the rover is in appears to have been repeatedly flooded with water in the past and the drilling operation will allow scientists to uncover the complex aqueous history of the place. The interactive panorama above comes from photographer Andrew Bodrov of Estonia, whose previous Curiosity panorama showed the rover just after it landed in August. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Andrew Bodrov

How to Meditate: 10 Important Tips Why meditate? On one level, meditation is a tool. It can help combat stress, fosters physical health, helps with chronic pain, can make you sleep better, feel happier, be more peaceful, as well as be more present. But on a deeper level, meditation is a doorway into the unknown. It can help us get a sense of the mystery of who we are. When you start meditating, you’ll notice how unruly the mind is. I remember being quite shocked by this! At first, my mind was all over the place. Profound thoughts about my past or future jostled with mundane thought clips about what groceries I needed to buy. It was like sitting in a crazy cinema! So, if you’re starting out with meditation, please don’t beat yourself up about your wild mind. Here are some simple tips on how to meditate.. 1. Whether you sit on a chair or cross-legged on the floor, make sure that your spine is upright with head up. 2. Try and keep you eyes open. 2. In ordinary consciousness we are hardly ever present. Attention comes from nowhere.

"Culture in Decline" - by Peter Joseph - Creator of The Zeitgeist Film Series Agile Blog | News about 1Password and Knox Meditations - Healing Meditations and Visualizations Collection of guided meditation and visualizations to bring about calmness, serenity, healing, and balance. Simple Visualization Exercises Park Bench Meditation If you are a people watcher like I am then this type of meditation will come easily to you. Doing this "Park Bench Meditation" is an interesting way of pulling back your energy and simply allowing the world to revolve all around you while you sit quietly for thirty minutes. And, at the same time you will be sharpening your awareness skills. Breakthrough The focus of this guided meditation is in relation to rebirthing, or breaking through the physical barrier to reclaim our personal power. Drumming Meditation Take five minutes to do this pre-drumming visualization to relax you and to draw energies to begin your meditative drumming session. Bathing Your Chakras Visualization Of course you take a bath or shower everyday to keep yourself clean and presentable. Rose Quartz Meditation - Clearing the Heart Chakra Metta Practice Kirtan Kriya

Richard Wilhelm - School of Wisdom Richard Wilhelm is the Marco Polo of the inner world of China. He, more than any other, is responsible for opening up to the West the vast spiritual heritage of China and thus all of Asia. He translated the great philosophical works from Chinese into German, where they have in turn been translated into the other major languages of the world, including English. To this day, among the dozens of translations of the I Ching now available, his 1923 translation stands head and shoulders above the rest. He introduced the I Ching, and Chinese philosophy, to the School of Wisdom when it first opened in 1920. These ideas have been a integral part of its program ever since. Another student of the School of Wisdom, Carl Jung, wrote an interesting sketch of the inner world of Richard Wilhelm, as part of his Jung's autobiography. This struggle manifested itself physically in 1910 when Wilhelm contracted amoebic dysentery from Chinese food and lay seriously ill for months.