Here is a full teaching from Sogyal Rinpoche on meditation and understanding the mind which he gave in Sydney at the end of March 2013.

In this video, Sogyal Rinpoche suggests an alternative to the habitual self-identification with our thoughts and emotions. Normally, it is as if the thoughts about who we are or what we are experiencing are in fact who we are.

Sit quietly for a moment or two. Now ask yourself: “Who am I?”

If you are anything like me, what happens next a bunch of thoughts arise such as a list of qualities (e.g. Talkative, honest, irascible…) or relationships (Blogger, Husband, Meditation Instructor…) or perhaps we might  start thinking paradoxically that “I am not my thoughts.” But almost all the time our response to the question is to think about who we are, rather than actually experience who we are.

In this video, Sogyal Rinpoche suggests an alternative to the habitual self-identification with our thoughts and emotions. Normally, it is as if the thoughts about who we are or what we are experiencing are in fact who we are.

My suggestion is that before you watch this video, take a few moments to meditate, calm the mind and allow yourself to come into the present moment. Then hit the play button. You might find that not only do you hear what Rinpoche is saying, but you can even get an experiential taste of what he is pointing us towards.

Have fun!

Our deepest wish as parents is for our children to be happy. We feel intensely our children’s pain and suffering and would literally do anything to help them. But often we find ourselves at a loss - we don’t know what is troubling them, or how to help, though we keep trying to talk it through, figure it out, fix it up!

Really listening and attending to our children can often be enough to ease their suffering. However, sometimes they do not know what is distressing them, or they may feel powerless to change an old habit such as worry and anxiety, an explosive temper, or fragile self-esteem. Some children also feel that they are in some way ‘bad’, they feel unloved and unlovable.*

In this video Sogyal Rinpoche explains that when you are not feeling well, the best thing to do is to sit quietly, not focussing on your problems and allow your mind to settle.

Here is the entire video, 111 minutes worth, of Sogyal Rinpoche's public teaching at AWAKE 2012 in Amsterdam.

Sogyal Rinpoche’s teaching children how "hanging loose" creates the feeling of meditation.

This is the third in a series of 5 posts on the history of meditation, adapted from Meditation- an In-depth Guide by Ian Gawler and Paul Bedson.
See here for the first and second part

Through the 1970s and 1980s many excellent books were published on meditation in general. In the therapeutic arena, Pauline McKinnon, an Australian patient of Dr Meares who had used his methods to recover from agoraphobia in 1983, published her own work based on his techniques, In Stillness Conquer Fear. My own first book, You Can Conquer Cancer, with its emphasis on meditation and cancer, was released in 1984. This was followed by my more specific books on meditation, Peace of Mind in 1987, Meditation—Pure and Simple in 1996, Meditation – an In-depth Guide, co-authored with Paul Bedson in 2010 and The Mind that Changes Everything in 2011.

By popular request, here is the entire video, 111 minutes worth,  of Sogyal Rinpoche's teaching at AWAKE 2012 in Amsterdam. It's great, don't miss it. And if you were there, see it again.

This is from Karén, who came all the way from Moscow, to attend the What Meditation Really Is 2012 retreat:

I have been interested in Buddhism since the age of 14 when I read my first book about it. Since that time I’ve read a lot of books but never really practised. First of all because, there are very few Buddhists in Russia, especially where I live, and I couldn’t find a master I could trust.