Latest blog posts
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Mindful with J
I'm sitting in my friend W's backyard, making a choo-choo train out of rocks with her 28-month old son while Mama rests inside. I've known W since she was a…Read more... -
Meditation: reducing noise in your brain or improving policy?
I recently read a very interesting paper by Shadlen and colleagues, who discussed the neural correlates of decision making. In this paper they discussed the issue of responsibility: if our…Read more... -
Bringing Compassion into Everyday Life
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,…Read more... -
Mindrolling Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche: Mindful Awareness without the Cushion
Here is Khandro Rinpoche on how we can keep the mindfulness we discover on the cushion as we go about daily activity. Hearing from my friend Gabriele that Rinpoche would…Read more... -
Insanity, Espresso and Teenage Wisdom
“Are you insane?” was one of my first thoughts on this melancholic and allegedly spring morning. My alarm was set early so that I could drag myself out of bed…Read more... -
Isn't It Amazing? No Matter What, Our Undistracted Mind is Always Available to Us!
Sometimes I feel like my life is spent in a dark, smoky, crowded, and noisy nightclub and that I’ve forgotten that there’s a door that’s always open if I choose…Read more... -
Meditation & compassion – how do they fit together?
The Buddhist teachings tell us that wisdom and compassion are like the two wings of a bird that will fly you to enlightenment and that you need both wings in…Read more... -
Compassion is Expanding the View of Self
This five minute video is the first part of a fascinating skype conversation between Elizabeth Namgyel and Erric. Elizabeth describes compassion as a radical expansion of self. Then she gives…Read more... -
Love and Insecurity
Not long ago, I fell in love with a beautiful woman. Gently, we became a bit closer. She rejected me, right at the moment, when I was SURE that we…Read more... -
Social Emotional Learning and Mindfulness-based Contemplative Practices in Education
A Meditation from the Field from Linda Lantieri and Madhavi Nambiar Mr. Gray, an educator in his second year of teaching in New York City wrote out his resignation letter…Read more...
To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. If you want to attain perfect calmness in your zazen [meditation], you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come, and let them go. Then they will be under control.
Suzuki Roshi
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Marieke van Vugt
I am a neuroscientist studying memory and decision making using neural activity and computational models. In my free time, I am a dancer. I have been a student of Sogyal Rinpoche since approximately 1998. I am fascinated by the human mind and brain, and like to study it both from the first-person perspective (my own mind) and the third-person perspective (other people's minds).
Monday, 14 May 2012 07:30
Meditation: reducing noise in your brain or improving policy?
I recently read a very interesting paper by Shadlen and colleagues, who discussed the neural correlates of decision making. In this paper they discussed the issue of responsibility: if our brain is fully deterministic, and our actions are governed by our brain, then can we said to be responsible for our actions? In particular, if there is a lot of noise in our brain, and that causes us to accidentally commit a negative action. So the question is: what are we to do?
Wednesday, 18 April 2012 00:35
Dealing with strong emotions in a complex world
Last week for me was a whirl-wind of emotions. I was getting ready for a conference, and at the same time had to deal with a co-author on a paper who kept wanting to change things (which involved me doing a lot more work in time that I simply did not have). In short, it was a great chance to work with my emotions. And today was the travel day to the conference, with the lovely surprise that someone decided to jump in front of the train, such that all trains were out of commission and I had to find another route to Berlin. Yet, surprisingly, after not dealing with the previous issues very elegantly, this last little bit of train delays did not disturb me majorly. At every road block (e.g., a bus driver driving very slowly although all passengers had a connection to catch on the other end) somehow there was a voice in me that said something about that all these feelings and emotions were just that: thoughts and emotions (and not atom bombs!).
Saturday, 07 April 2012 12:04
Meeting discipline in our meditation: the joyous or the neurotic?
One of the things I recently got to think about is discipline. The interesting thing is that discipline is a double-edged sword: it can be very productive, but it can also make you very neurotic. While people often consider me to be an amazingly disciplined person, I frequently wonder whether I am in fact too neurotic.
Saturday, 31 March 2012 09:05
Self-compassion is important!
I recently attended a weekend by Patrick Gaffney, who is an amazing teacher on the topic of compassion. Not surprisingly, this was what the weekend was mostly about. He defined it very beautifully as the spontaneous wisdom of the heart.
Saturday, 10 March 2012 19:46
Being at home while moving
I recently bought a house (for the first time ever!) and moved into it a few days ago. I was surprised at how unsettling the whole experience was, and yet, it showed me how practice helps you to be at home wherever you are. In preparation for the move, I was somewhat scared of the prospect of living out of boxes for a few days.
And then there are all the unknown things that you could be forgetting... While I spent many a meditation practice going through lists in my head of what I could be forgetting, the practice also made me more calm and settled, and confident that somehow it was going to be all right. While I am quite a nervous person, just simply sitting helped me to avoid getting too caught up in worry. After all, if you can make intercontinental moves, a move within a city shouldn't be so bad... Then as more and more boxes got packed, I was surprised to see how little I really need. What I imagined to be terrible really wasn't so bad. I was actually quite comfortable between the boxes, and life just went on.
And then there are all the unknown things that you could be forgetting... While I spent many a meditation practice going through lists in my head of what I could be forgetting, the practice also made me more calm and settled, and confident that somehow it was going to be all right. While I am quite a nervous person, just simply sitting helped me to avoid getting too caught up in worry. After all, if you can make intercontinental moves, a move within a city shouldn't be so bad... Then as more and more boxes got packed, I was surprised to see how little I really need. What I imagined to be terrible really wasn't so bad. I was actually quite comfortable between the boxes, and life just went on.
Wednesday, 08 February 2012 14:10
The meditation of dance, or the dance of meditation
A little while ago I had a radio interview with the Dutch Buddhist Broadcasting company, and one of the things I talked a lot about with the interviewer was the relation between my meditation practice and my passion for ballet. Then when I read the wonderful book Confessions of a gypsy yogini by fellow blogger Marcia Dechen Wangmo, where she wrote about her passion for dance, I decided it was time to blog about it.
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 21:50
Help--I am angry!
A little while ago I had an interesting experience at work, where the things I learnt in my meditation practice surely came in helpful. The situation is that I am very lucky to be mostly surrounded by some of the most interesting, kind and open-minded people. As a result, I pretty much never get angry. I always used to think I am just "not that kind of a person that gets angry". It turned out, I was wrong. I just hadn't met the people to make me angry.
Thursday, 19 January 2012 13:21
Meditation modifies brain networks
One of the major interests of the meditation research community has been the study of the brain's default mode functioning. What is the default mode and why should we care? Scientists studying the default mode look at what networks in the brain turn on and off in a coordinated fashion.
Monday, 16 January 2012 20:43
Compassion in the city
Last weekend we had a visit in Groningen by Maureen Cooper, a senior instructor in the Rigpa Buddhist sangha. She taught a very inspiring weekend about how to bring the Buddhist teachings on meditation and compassion into busy city life. They helped me a lot to re-inspire myself to bring the sanity in my crazy life.
Monday, 02 January 2012 13:13
Aspirations for the new year
For me, the holidays are always a time for reflection on the year that passed, and aspirations for the year that is coming. I am lucky that I have a family who is for the most part not crazy about having a very packed Christmas or New Year's eve, so all is relatively quiet, and at the same time work has also slowed down. For me, a lot has happened in the past year, my first year as an assistant professor, so I learnt a lot about teaching, writing grants, and all kinds of rules and regulations I have to deal with.





