In January, I was fortunate enough to speak to Diane Grady about meditation. Diane is one of the founding members of a group of business and community leaders in Australia called ‘Practical Wisdom’ and has herself been on the board of a number of large Australian public companies for over 15 years. The Practical Wisdom group began about 12 years ago following a dharma talk given by Sogyal Rinpoche at the Australian School of Management and a question he posed: “Is this relevant to business?” The response was an overwhelming “Yes” and since then the Practical Wisdom group has gathered each year to receive further teachings on meditation and Buddhist wisdom. In addition, the group also now meets for a few hours each month to practise meditation together.

These days there is all kinds of interesting stuff on the web about meditation and that's a good thing! After the jump you will find some links to recent articles and videos about meditation.

Marvin Minsky talks about the “sense of self”, awareness and consciousness.

Combining contemporary psychotherapy with the science and techniques of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Dr. Neale provides the conceptual maps, practical skills and emotional support that lead to optimal health and happiness. For more info check him out by clicking here.

Review of a bunch of different kinds of meditation cushions and one meditation bench.

Dr. Jonathan S. Kaplan speeks about the connection between mindfulness, meditation and therapy.

The other night I attended a talk at the Interdependence Project in New York. The talk was given by two psychologists who use mindfulness meditation in their practice.

In this video, Sogyal Rinpoche speaks about this awareness and how it relates to the three principles of shamatha or meditation.

Learn about the Tenzin Gyatso Institute’s Scholars program, inspired by HH Dalai Lama.

Mindfulness probably means slightly different things in different traditions of meditation. At WMRI we usually talk about three principles for using an object, such as the breath, a candle or even the state of non-distraction itself, as the focus of our meditation.

1) Mindfulness – which is the pure knowing or awareness of the object.
2) Watchful Awareness – making sure that we are keeping our attention gently focused on the object
3) Abiding or Remaining Spaciously – It is said that we should ‘train in letting the mind remain’. We should remain in whatever we are aware of, be it:
—meditating with an object like watching the breath, or
—simply remaining in the state of non-distraction or pure awareness of the present moment.