When you set out to learn meditation, your emotional patterns will delightfully come along.  In fact, they will probably be your first and fiercest obstacles to overcome.  While you may consistently falter due to their incessant influence, you may not even notice given how unconscious and instantaneous these responses have become.

Are any of these seven common tendencies dampening your meditation?

Perfectionism.  An intense drive to clarify every element of the instruction and apply the methods faultlessly.  Comes with a long list of questions on how to do it right, a furrowed brow, and muscle tension.  Don't confuse the methods with meditation itself.  Meditation transforms the ambiance of the mind.  An over focus on technique constrains it.

A few days ago I saw a power point presentation on you-tube about a recent study on the effects of meditation and compassion practice on the brain. While there have been more and more studies of this kind in the recent years and months, what struck me most about this study was that it showed just how easy it is to change our minds (or at least our brains) with such a little amount of time and effort.

Compassion is a gift that keeps on giving. When you develop a sense of connection and genuine concern for others, you not only help them with your presence and actions, you also give yourself a gift. How? By engaging in each moment with an open mind and heart, you learn not to run from any experience. As such, you become increasingly able to handle whatever life throws your way. Opening the heart develops strength, not weakness.
One can practice compassion both on and off the cushion. Here I offer a simple sitting meditation practice as well as 10 informal exercises for bringing compassion into your daily life. Pretty soon, the distinction between these modes of practice loses meaning. All of life becomes practice.

If you’re already on your cushion and working to tame your wild mind through meditation, then please congratulate yourself because you have already accomplished quite a lot.

If not, then you might want to read this…

Not long ago I came across this very simple statement from the Buddha in a book by the great Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh:

Love is understanding.

I find this to be such a beautiful statement and I think it reveals a lot about how the practice of meditation can change the world and make us more loving. Here are a few reflections…

 

This post was sent into us from Cynthia Choi, enjoy the post!

I’m sitting on my cushion, looking out the sliding glass doors at the valley below. The trees are bare. The land is sighing peacefully, catching its breath before winter. I fervently resolve to meditate on equanimity so that, for the sake of others, I may attain complete enlightenment.

 

What a relief!  The last eclipse of the year occurs today. But there’s more to come next year! 

An eclipse can trigger sudden, irrevocable change in your life that comes about due to external circumstances.

Yikes!  Unexpected change.  The kind of change that can make your head spin in disbelief and leave your knees knocking loudly.

Fortunately, every eclipse doesn’t effect every person so dramatically. 

But still, you can’t escape change forever.  There’s also the unfolding of karma - the fruition of your past actions - which can also twist your world around in abrupt and surprising ways.

Change will arrive in this lightning-like way at some point in your life.  What will you do?

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche shares a few words with our WhatMeditationReallyIs.com community.

 

Sharon Salzberg from the 'Wisdom of Awareness' Retreat with Sogyal Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, June 2011 (Garrison Institute, New York), she talks about the importance of a loving attitude in our modern society.

 

Here is a video from Sharon Salzberg's talk during the June Wisdom of Awareness retreat.