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Articles from Steven Sashen | Selfgrowth.com
- ***Why Do You Want to Meditate? - by Submitted on Feb 05, 2010 from Steven SashenThere are a lot of different reasons people want to learn meditation. Maybe you think meditation will help you relax and better handle stress. Perhaps you play a sport and your coach recommended meditation to improve your performance. Maybe you are focused on spiritual growth and believe that if ...
Views: 1216(1 vote) - ***Who Cares about Buddhist Monks? - by Submitted on Feb 05, 2010 from Steven SashenMore than ever before, meditation is being researched by science. Because of advances in imaging technology, such as fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging, we can now see much more than we used to about the inner workings of our brains. Since many scientists are baby boomers who grew ...
Views: 1211(2 votes) - ***Finding Meditation Techniques That Are Right For You - by Submitted on Feb 05, 2010 from Steven SashenWhen you are searching for meditation techniques or want meditation instruction, whether you are looking for relaxation meditation or spiritual meditation techniques, if you are an advanced student or a beginner, if you are searching for anxiety relief or anything else...whatever reason you may ...
Views: 1303(2 votes) - ***What is Meditation? - by Submitted on Jan 27, 2010 from Steven SashenTo some people, meditation means sitting in a dark cave on top of a mountain in a loin cloth, burning incense and chanting some foreign Sanskrit word while eating nothing but tree bark. Other people define meditation as a state they experience while participating in an activity they are ...
Views: 1398(3 votes) - ***Understanding Tibetan Buddhist Meditation - by Submitted on Jan 27, 2010 from Steven SashenOne of the countries in which Buddhism has had a recent impact is Tibet. "Recent," in this case means, oh, about 1000 years ago, when Buddhism was brought to Tibet from India by Padmasambhava. These days, Tibetan Buddhism is popular world-wide. The Dalai Lama has written many books, won a ...
Views: 987(1 vote) - ***How To Learn Zen Meditation - by Submitted on Jan 27, 2010 from Steven SashenWould you like to learn Zen meditation? If you do, then you have to make a decision: would you prefer to sit staring at a blank wall, or would you like to have an idea what other meditators in the room look like? Actually, there’s another decision involved: do you want your progress ...
Views: 2321(1 vote) - ***TM® in School - Good Idea or Hidden Religion? - by Submitted on Jan 27, 2010 from Steven SashenI recently read an Arizona Daily Star article about how Transcendental Meditation® is being taught in an alternative-minded school. Now, since I teach meditation myself, you might expect I’d be happy about this, particularly since the article reports positive results. If only it were so ...
Views: 1101(2 votes) - ***How To Learn Zen Meditation - by Submitted on Jan 15, 2010 from Steven SashenWould you like to learn Zen meditation? If you do, then you have to make a decision: would you prefer to sit staring at a blank wall, or would you like to have an idea what other meditators in the room look like? Actually, there’s another decision involved: do you want your progress ...
Views: 1207(3 votes) - ***TM® in School - Good Idea or Hidden Religion? - by Submitted on Jan 15, 2010 from Steven SashenI recently read an Arizona Daily Star article about how Transcendental Meditation® is being taught in an alternative-minded school. Now, since I teach meditation myself, you might expect I’d be happy about this, particularly since the article reports positive results. If only it were so ...
Views: 1206(3 votes) - ***Tips for Buddhist Meditation Retreats - by Submitted on Jan 15, 2010 from Steven SashenI’ve done somewhere in the neighborhood of forty Buddhist meditation retreats. While some only lasted a day or two, more than half involved ten to fifteen days of practicing Buddhist meditation for up to sixteen hours a day. Some were Tibetan meditation retreats. Some retreats were in the Zen ...
Views: 2623(4 votes) - ***Your Perfect Meditation Cushion - by Submitted on Jan 15, 2010 from Steven SashenHave you found your perfect meditation cushion yet? You know, a mediation cushion that lets you sit for hours at a time, staying focused and alert and concentrated, with no back pain or any numbness in your legs? The type of meditation cushion that gives you a straight spine with no effort at ...
Views: 1559(3 votes) - ***The Meditation Mind - A Simple Daily Meditation - by Submitted on Jan 15, 2010 from Steven SashenHere is a daily meditation to play with… I haven't ever heard anyone complain about the fact that their body feels, or their ears hear, or their nose smells or their eyes see. To put it another way, we don't usually complain or attempt to fix our senses when they are doing what they were ...
Views: 992(2 votes) - ***Meditation in Motion - Yoga Meditation - by Submitted on Jan 15, 2010 from Steven SashenYou could say that yoga & meditation are two sides of a coin. They can be difficult to separate. Doing both meditation and yoga isn't required, but they do go together well. They each can enhance your practice of the other. If you take meditation to your yoga mat, you may find more ease and ...
Views: 1119(3 votes) - ***The Buddha Was Not Enlightened - by Submitted on Jan 06, 2010 from Steven SashenAlright, let’s talk about the "E-Word," one of those combinations of letters that carries almost as much baggage as the c-word or the n-word, depending, of course, on who you hang with and what country you call home. People argue about this word; they criticize it; they make up stories about ...
Views: 1868(5 votes) - ***Meditation Problems - by Submitted on Jan 06, 2010 from Steven SashenOne of my friends is a Tibetan Buddhist monk. He’s an actual Tibetan born in Tibet, not an American who has converted to Tibetan Buddhism or learned Tibetan Buddhist meditation. If you’re actively involved with some religious or spiritual tradition, I recommend getting to know a ...
Views: 1674(3 votes) - ***Prayer Meditation – Fulfilling Your True Desires - by Submitted on Jan 06, 2010 from Steven SashenAre meditation and prayers the same thing? Some traditions use the words meditation and prayer interchangeably. You can find Jewish and Hindu and Catholic and Buddhist meditation practices that require the repetition or contemplation of a particular religious passage or concept. To ...
Views: 1385(3 votes) - ***How to Overcome Problems in Meditation Practice - by Submitted on Jan 06, 2010 from Steven SashenAfter teaching meditation to thousands of people, when I ask what sorts of problems they encounter with their practice, I hear the same three answers again and again. The problem I hear the most frequently is that people can't quiet their minds. They refer to having "monkey mind," or tell me, ...
Views: 1258(2 votes) - ***New Meditation Practices That Actually Work - by Submitted on Dec 22, 2009 from Steven SashenI was eight years old when I first began meditating. No, I wasn't raised in a commune by hippie parents. I checked out a book on meditation from the school library and practiced the technique in the book. So began my thirty years of meditation practice. Over the course of my meditation ...
Views: 1424(4 votes) - ***My Problem with Transcendental Meditation® Studies - by Submitted on Dec 22, 2009 from Steven SashenFirst, a message to my readers who practice TM® (Transcendental Meditation®): I am not taking any position for or against Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the TM® organization, TM® itself, or anything else related to TM®. Now that we've taken care of that… I do, however, have a position ...
Views: 4757(3 votes) - ***Music Meditation Mantra and Me - by Submitted on Dec 22, 2009 from Steven SashenFriends often talk to me about the hours they spend doing triathlons or running marathons, and usually I say that I can't imagine doing something I love for so many hours. So it surprises me to remember that I once spent three days chanting Hindu mantras, non-stop, at the top of my lungs. ...
Views: 1226(3 votes) - ***Be There Then - Mindfulness Meditation - by Submitted on Dec 22, 2009 from Steven SashenI was over at my friend Dave’s house when I noticed he had a book called 8-Minute Meditation. I had to take look at it. Since I think meditation can be experienced instantly and this fellow says you can do it in eight minutes, I was curious to see what he’s up to. In a nutshell, he was ...
Views: 1053(3 votes) - ***Vipassana vs. Zen Meditation - by Submitted on Dec 22, 2009 from Steven SashenWhich is better: Zen meditation or Vipassana meditation? I’m regularly asked this question because new students often have some friends who are into Zen meditation retreats and other friends suggesting they try Vipassana meditation retreats. Or they check the bookstore and discover that, in ...
Views: 7944(3 votes) - ***Meditation Won’t Help You - by Submitted on Dec 16, 2009 from Steven SashenMeditation is not going to help you. Meditation will not make you more peaceful and calm. It’s not going to eliminate your stress. Meditation will not cure your disease. It’s not going to advance you spiritually. Meditation will not help you do better at your job or sport or hobby. Meditation ...
Views: 1133(3 votes) - ***New York Style Meditation - by Submitted on Dec 16, 2009 from Steven SashenThe New York subway used to be my meditation room. Somehow, the noise in the background of the subway served to drown out the noise in the background of my mind and made it much easier to concentrate. When I was in grad school, as I rode from Greenwich Village to Columbia University, I could ...
Views: 1112(2 votes) - ***Meditation: Mindfulness or Mindlessness? - by Submitted on Dec 16, 2009 from Steven SashenOne of my closest friends wrote me to say he planned to go on a mindfulness meditation retreat to find some relaxation. I picked up the phone to suggest that he might want to reconsider that plan. Now, I’d like to be clear about this. I have spent long periods of time at meditation ...
Views: 1757(1 vote) - ***Meditate - How To? - by Submitted on Dec 16, 2009 from Steven SashenIf you’d like to relax, take a mental vacation, gain some spiritual insight, or just clear your mind, a good way to do so is to meditate. There are many different was to do meditation and there are even more methods to learn how to meditate. Almost every religion has its own meditation ...
Views: 1147(2 votes) - ***Discovering Transcendental Meditation® and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - by Submitted on Dec 16, 2009 from Steven SashenWhile not the first person to teach meditation in the West, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has been one of the more influential meditation teachers of our times. You probably recognize his photo even if you didn't recognize his name. And if his photo isn’t familiar to you, chances are good that you ...
Views: 1387(1 vote) - ***Meditate - How To? - by Submitted on Dec 08, 2009 from Steven SashenIf you’d like to relax, take a mental vacation, gain some spiritual insight, or just clear your mind, a good way to do so is to meditate. There are many different was to do meditation and there are even more methods to learn how to meditate. Almost every religion has its own meditation ...
Views: 986(3 votes) - ***Discovering Transcendental Meditation® and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - by Submitted on Dec 08, 2009 from Steven SashenWhile not the first person to teach meditation in the West, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has been one of the more influential meditation teachers of our times. You probably recognize his photo even if you didn't recognize his name. And if his photo isn’t familiar to you, chances are good that you ...
Views: 1288(3 votes) - ***Online Meditation Classes - by Submitted on Dec 08, 2009 from Steven SashenMeditation classes you can take online are an amazing new development on the spiritual path. Previously in order to learn meditation, you’d need to travel - sometimes to the other side of the globe – in order to find a teacher. You’d need to spend weeks, sometimes months or even years with ...
Views: 1171(2 votes) - ***Maturity and Meditation - by Submitted on Dec 08, 2009 from Steven SashenSeveral decades ago, I listened to a talk given by a Western teacher who had become a monk in a Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In order to protect the possibly guilty, I’ll leave out his name. He described how, in the years since he’d become a monk and began formally practicing meditation, he had ...
Views: 1582(3 votes) - ***Meditation and Yoga - Pathways to Inner Peace? - by Submitted on Dec 08, 2009 from Steven SashenThere must be something wrong with the way I talk. I decided this must be the case because when I say I teach meditation, people frequently say, "Oh, you do yoga?" Meditation… yoga… I don’t think they sound like the same words – do you? Many people, however, seem to think they are ...
Views: 1080(3 votes) - ***How to Learn Buddhist Meditation Techniques - by Submitted on Dec 02, 2009 from Steven SashenBack when I started doing Buddhist meditation in the ‘70’s, it was hard to find any Buddhist books or Buddhist retreats or Buddhist meditation classes or any information of any kind at all that could help me learn a daily Buddhist meditation practice. If you started talking about the "Dalai ...
Views: 1763(6 votes) - ***Meditation: Is It a Relaxation System? - by Submitted on Dec 02, 2009 from Steven SashenIs meditation meant to be a relaxation system? I wonder about that. When I was eighteen, I was introduced to a famous American meditation teacher and we became friends. Through him, I met another American who had spent the prior six years in Thailand as a Buddhist monk. This former monk had ...
Views: 1230(4 votes) - ***Integrating Daily Life with Daily Meditation - by Submitted on Dec 02, 2009 from Steven SashenOn one of the meditation courses I did, we sat for fourteen hours a day. During that time, there was one three-hour period when we were supposed to sit in the meditation hall on our meditation cushions without moving in any way. No scratching, no fidgeting, no itching, no twitching - no moving ...
Views: 1354(5 votes) - ***Improve Your Daily Zen Meditation Practice - by Submitted on Nov 25, 2009 from Steven SashenJason Shulman, a friend of mine and Kabbalistic healer, tells one of my very favorite stories about Zen meditation. He had gone on sesshin, a Zen meditation retreat. He was at a place in his daily meditation practice where he had come to believe that the goal of Zen meditation was to have ...
Views: 3539(9 votes) - ***Meditation and Depression - by Submitted on Nov 25, 2009 from Steven SashenAs I wrote the title of this post, “Meditation and Depression,” I found myself smiling at the concept that meditation could cause depression. There’s no question that in the meditation groups I’ve participated in, meditation appeared to cause a depression in the ability to think critically ...
Views: 1444(6 votes) - ***Learning How to Meditate - by Submitted on Nov 25, 2009 from Steven SashenNot long ago, I did a web search for how to meditate. In each of the top twenty results were nearly identical basic instructions: Find a quiet spot. Choose the same time to meditate each day. Sit upright with your back relaxed and your spine straight. Avoid distractions. … followed ...
Views: 1095(4 votes) - ***Meditation Yoga Techniques You Can Learn - by Submitted on Nov 25, 2009 from Steven SashenWould learning to do meditation yoga techniques create more peace for your body-mind? Yoga and meditation both demonstrate how the mind and body are interdependent. If you relax the body with yoga, the mind will get the hint, too. If you calm the mind with meditation, then the body can let ...
Views: 1113(2 votes) - ***Zen Meditation: How it Works - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven SashenFor people in the West, Zen Buddhist meditation can often seem mysterious and magical, as well as a bit confusing at times. If you take some time to look underneath the mythology around Zen, however, it can be much easier to comprehend. I have to warn you, though, that discovering the ...
Views: 1042(6 votes) - ***Stop Thinking - a Somewhat Guided, Somewhat Meditation - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven SashenWhen we try to stop thoughts, we are playing a cerebral kind of "Whack-A-Mole." It doesn't matter how many times you go after that mole, there are always more of them bursting out of various holes, over and over, faster and faster, not stopping. But there are other possible ways to ...
Views: 711(5 votes) - ***How To Meditate - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven Sashen"How to Meditate" In 1970, I saw this title on a small ad in the back of a comic book. I could learn to meditate for just $1, the ad promised. “Secrets of ancient yogi masters revealed: achieve psychic powers, control the mind!” Learning to meditate like a monk through this step-by-step ...
Views: 844(3 votes) - ***How to be a Meditation Teacher - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven SashenWant to learn how to teach meditation? It’s simple. You can turn yourself into a meditation teacher in less than five minutes by following these easy steps. First, pick a simple meditation technique and practice describing how to do it. You don’t have to be able to do it yourself, ...
Views: 979(3 votes) - ***Learning Meditation Where You Live - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven SashenIt is easier than ever to get meditation instruction where you live. You can find meditation classes in almost any American city. I’ve seen YMCA's in the middle of nowhere offer free meditation instruction. At one time, you could have listed all of America’s spiritual and meditation retreat ...
Views: 770(2 votes) - ***Why Isn’t Meditation Instruction Free? - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven Sashen“Meditation teachers should offer their instruction for free.” About once a month, I get an email telling me that. Often, I hear this from people who have studied with meditation teachers in India or have visited ashrams where they weren’t asked for payment for classes they took. This gave ...
Views: 863(3 votes) - ***Finding Your Perfect Meditation Cushion - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven SashenFinding the right meditation supplies, especially the perfect meditation cushion, can feel lot like looking for the Holy Grail. I started meditating in 1970 and since then, I've tried almost every kind of meditation cushion ever created. I've spent so much time on this I even tried to ...
Views: 827(3 votes) - ***Finding a Buddhist Meditation Retreat Center - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven SashenIf you are looking into Buddhist meditation and you want to really go deeply into it, then the best way to do that is to go on a Buddhist meditation retreat. You can find Buddhist meditation centers just about anywhere in the world. However, having completed over thirty meditation retreats, I ...
Views: 1508(2 votes) - ***Doing a Vipassana Meditation Retreat - by Submitted on Nov 10, 2009 from Steven SashenI've done more than twenty Vipassana meditation retreats. My first one was in 1983. I had been meditating for more than twelve years at that point, but I had never taken ten days to do nothing except meditate for fourteen hours a day. Americans interested in practicing Vipassana are likely to ...
Views: 2032(2 votes) - ***Daily Meditations Beginning Meditators Can Do - by Submitted on Nov 02, 2009 from Steven SashenThose who are just starting out with meditation often try to create a daily meditation practice. People regularly ask me to talk about starting a daily practice in a similar tone to how people talk about losing weight or stopping smoking. The conversation sounds like there is some habit that ...
Views: 1317(10 votes) - ***Meditation Retreats - 10 Tips to Get You Started - by Submitted on Nov 02, 2009 from Steven SashenHere are some ideas on how to best prepare for your first meditation retreat: 1) Make sure details are handled before leaving. Pay your bills. Arrange for someone to check your messages and let them know where to reach you in case of emergency. Be sure someone will be checking on your pets ...
Views: 951(1 vote)