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Vipassana Meditation In Indian Prisons
March 21, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · 2 Comments
This is a powerful film showing the transformational effects of vipassana meditation on the lives of prison inmates in India. I first saw this film in Darhamasala (home in exile of HH Dalai Lama) where I twice did the 10 day retreat. If anybody has any doubts about the benefits and power of meditation to positively impact a persons life, this film is for you – and it is a film so sit back and enjoy!
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out more
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Walking Meditation
February 20, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
Walking meditation as a practice comes from the Buddhist tradition, specifically Theravada Buddhism. It is a very helpful practice if you find it difficult to sit still without physical discomfort while meditating. It can also be rotated with sitting practice, for example 15 minutes sitting practice 15 minutes walking meditation.
There are three primary components to a walking meditation:
1: Being aware of your breathing
It may be a good idea to begin by standing still and attuning to the breath before you begin walking.
Become aware of your breathing by first noticing the movement of the body as you breath. See if you can notice the exact moment you begin to inhale, and follow the movement as breath enters. Then see if you can notice the exact moment when the inhalation completes, notice what happens next. And see if you can identify the exact moment exhalation begins and just when it finishes. Notice what happens next.
Do your best to let your body breath, after all it does it all by itself 24/7 since you were born. All you are doing is paying attention to the process. Maybe the process changes because you are paying attention but let go of trying to control the breathing.
Spend a few minutes walking just with attention on the breath entering and leaving the body, let go of any uneccesary tension around the breath as it enters and leaves.
2: Being conscious and attentive to your body’s movement.
Pay attention to your body’s movement. Start to notice the contact with the earth on the soles of your
feet as you walk. Notice which part of your foot makes first contact and how the rest of your foot comes down. Feel how the weight of your body is carried forward onto the leading foot as you walk. Notice what muscles come into action and when. Also notice how your breathing has changed as you walk.
Notice how your arms swing as you walk along. Feel how you hold your head and neck, is it rigid and tense or fluid and moving? Switch your attention to different body parts as you are walking and you may be surprised at what you find. Do you feel the air brushing onto your skin, the warmth of the sun? Can you feel your heartbeat, or notice blinking?
Do our best to keep some degree of awareness on the movement of the body as it breathes and notice if it changes and why.
3: Paying attention to your surroundings
When you consciously begin paying attention to your surroundings, you’ll probably be surprised at just how much you notice. We tend to take lots of things for granted in our everyday life and much of what is around us goes largely
unnoticed.
As you are doing walking meditation, notice the different colors that you see. Notice how the color of things changes as you move. Is the quality of light constant or changing? Notice that the green of a tree for example is actually many varieties in color and hue. You’ll find that once you start this attuning process, you’ll notice more and
more things that have previously escaped your attention.
Also pay attention to what you hear and smell. There may be bird song, road noise or the
chatter of people or animals. Consciously tune in to these different sounds. Notice the
sound of different birds, different vehicles. Listen for subtler sounds as you tune in to the soundscape that constantly surrounds us. You’ll find yourself hearing things that have merely passed you by before. There are also plenty of smells around you what can you identify as you focus on this sense?
Once you’ve completed your walking meditation, take a small amount of time to just be still. In this stillness, observe you state now. Then mentally run through what you experienced during your walking meditation time. See how long you can maintain this openness of awareness and carry it from walking meditation into your life.
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreBreathing Meditation Instruction
February 18, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
Breathing meditation is one of the most basic forms of meditation. Deceptively simple, it will soon show you what a monkey mind you have. It is the foundation of many buddhist meditation practices such as vipassana and mindfulness meditation. Breathing meditation is also an important yoga meditation.
Some forms of vipassana place emphasis on observing the breath at the nose tip, while others at the navel. Here are the breathing meditation instructions of my own, I will endeavor to record it and make it available as a free resource. My emphasis is attention on the body moving as it breathes. As I see it breath doesn’t actually exist, it is just air that the body draws in and expels. So the place to
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out morePaul McCartney In Concert For Meditation Fund
January 27, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · 3 Comments
To fund meditation classes for school children, David Lynch has organized a "Global Benefit" concert in New York on April 14. Paul McCartney is headlining, Donovan, Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), Sheryl Crow, Paul Horn,and Moby are among the other stars to perform at the Radio City music hall.
The money raised will be for the David Lynch Foundation, with the goal of teaching Transcendental Meditation to 1 million children world wide. Lynch believes that achieving this goal will lead to a dramatic change in the world. In the past year, the Foundation has provided millions of dollars for thousands of students, teachers, and parents to learn to meditate.
Hundreds of scientific studies have been conducted on the benefits of the Transcendental Meditation program at more than 200 independent universities and research institutions worldwide in the past 35 years, and the National Institutes of Health has awarded over $20 million to research the prevention-oriented health benefits of the TM program. Findings have been published in leading, peer-reviewed scientific journals, including The American Journal of Cardiology and the American Heart Association’s Hypertension and Stroke.
Published research on the Transcendental Meditation program in educational settings has shown a wide range of practical benefits for both students and teachers. Benefits for students include decreased stress and stress-related disorders, reduced substance abuse, increased intelligence, increased learning ability, improved memory, improved academic performance, and improved standardized test scores. Benefits for teachers include decreased stress and stress-related disorders, decreased anxiety, reduced substance abuse, increased creativity, improved job satisfaction, improved interpersonal relationships, and reduced health care utilization and costs.
Lynch himself has been practising TM fo rover 30 years. He says Someday, hopefully very soon, “diving within” as a preparation for learning and as a tool for developing the creative potential of the mind will be a standard part of every school’s curriculum. The stresses of today’s world are taking an enormous toll on our children right now. There are hundreds of schools, with thousands of students, who are eager to relieve this stress and bring out the full potential of every student by providing this Consciousness-Based education today.
Find out more about the concert and the Foundations work at http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreListening As Meditation
January 9, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
One of the simplest forms of meditation is listening. You don’t even have to sit still to practice listening. Except for when you are asleep, listening is always happening. You are either listening to the mind or to something else. When we are not listening to the mind, the opportunity exists to be aware that listening is still happening. Listening is part of Awareness, which is a name that is often given to our true nature. If you look closely at who you really are, you find only Awareness—vast empty space that is aware, conscious. You are this consciousness, this awareness, of the mind, of feelings, of sounds, of sights, of sensations, of energy, of what is in any moment.
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreMeditation In Prison
November 15, 2008 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
I must admit to not having yet seen this movie in it’s entirety, but some years ago in Darhamasala I did see other documentary’s on vipassana taught in prisons, so i have a sense of how it will go. I just happened to stumble across this trailer and thought it worth sharing.
The Dhamma Brothers tells a dramatic tale of human potential and transformation as it closely follows and documents the stories of the prison inmates at Donaldson Correction Facility who enter into this intensive program.
Behind high security towers and a double row of barbed wire and electrical fence dwells a host of convicts who will never see the light of day. But for some of these men, a spark is ignited when it becomes the first maximum-security prison in North America to hold an extended Vipassana retreat, an emotionally and physically demanding course of silent meditation lasting ten days.
The book of the film is available here
Letters from the Dhamma Brothers: Meditation Behind Bars
