Category Archives: Meditation

Learning to calm the mind through meditation

Posted on December 24, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Sometimes I’m a little bit manic with different ideas flooding my mind. Although you might think of your mental state as being uncontrollable. To a great degree, mental state is related to breathing. And breathing is to some degree under conscious control.

Pranayama is the the form of yoga that focuses on breath control. Prana is the Sanskrit word for breath or life force. Ayama is the Sanskirt word for extend. Through breath control one can learn to slow down the breathing and calm the mind.

I usually start my meditation practice by concentrating on slowing down my breathing. Breathing in for a 10 count and out for a 10 count. You can focus on drawing the air in through one nostril and expelling it through the other.

You can then try a different breathing patterns. Breath of fire is a pattern of short breaths.

As I concentrate, I try to concentrate my awareness on my smell and the sounds around me. Sometimes I try to concentrate all my awareness on a part of my body say the little finger.

after a half-hour of meditation I’m much more productive. Instead of trying to do 10 things and accomplishing none, I can focus on completing one thing at a time until I’ve completed all 10.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Meditation

Dharma Talk 1

Posted on September 15, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Have you ever thought about the purpose of life? The big picture.

Our wonderful sun that sustains all life will explode in a huge supernova that will engulf the earth and destroy all life on the planet. All human knowledge, efforts, joys and hopes will disappear in the aftermath of that nuclear explosion. What was all the fuss of life about?
I asked a carpenter friend of mine this question. He said that every time he builds a piece of furniture he know that someday it will be destroyed, but that doesn’t stop him from creating. He enjoys working with the wood and tools as he creates the chair. The chair will provide comfort and joy to the family that own it. And yes it will decay, but the wood will be salvaged to make other furniture.
Nature is constantly building up and destroying to build new things. Nature is a process of growth and then creative destruction. Even the nuclear armageddon of the sun’s supernova i creates the heavy elements necessary for life to exist. The carbon and iron in my body is the end product of a supernova of a previous star’s nuclear furnace.
As both the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and Buddha said nothing is permanent. Everything is change. The only constant is the continual process of birth, growth and creative destruction.
Because nothing is eternal we need to appreciate the now. Each year, for a couple of weeks, the cherry trees in the park by my house explode into beautiful bouquets of pink blossoms. I make a special trip each day to admire them and try to enjoy at least one picnic beneath the boughs. And then the blossoms are gone. Because the blossoms are here only a short time I look forward to seeing them each spring.
Some of my sweetest memories are of spring love in Tokyo. There is very little privacy in the Japanese house . In my neighbourhood in Yokohama all the houses had thin walls of only brown, rusting sheet metal with no insulation. It’s common for couples to visit love hotels where the rooms are rented out in 2 hour slots. Somehow the two hour time limit made each moment precious.
The first teaching of Buddha is that life is suffering. How can this gift of life be suffering? Because in the happy time we want to prolong the sweetness of the moment. We don’t want to let it go. And during the sad times we want to deny the present and live in the future or the past. Humans are trapped in this process

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Meditation, Stress Reduction

Benefits of meditation – Calming

Posted on September 15, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Last Thursday I was drinking a coffee at Cafe Artigiano on Broadway. A woman was chatting about meditation at the next table. Turns out she’s a single Mum with an intense job doing tech at a local hospital plus looking after a couple of young kids.

Between her job, cooking, for her family, helping with homework, and all the other stuff going on in her life she was pretty frazzled with her kids. Often locking herself in the bedroom with a do not disturb sign to try to restore her state of mind.
But then she started to meditate. Now she meditates for about 20 minutes each day. She’s a lot less stressed out dealing with the kids and the lockdowns are a thing of the past.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Meditation, Stress Reduction

How to meditate – Vapassana Meditaton

Posted on September 15, 2010 by | Leave a comment

I’ve been doing Vapassana (mindfulness) meditation for a couple of months now. Each day I meditate for 20 to 30 minutes using the countdown timer on my Nokia 5130 cell phone. I meet up with my meditation group once a week on Wednesdays.

How to meditate?
1. Get a chair with a straight back (this is important a bean-bag chair won’t do). Sit down with your legs placed solidly on the floor about a shoulder-width apart. let your arms relax on your lap with your thumbs and index fingers forming a circle. Hold your head level and keep your eyes half open (so you don’t fall asleep). The posture is meant to enable your prana (Sanskrit)/ki (Japanese)/chi (Chinese) energy to flow without blockage.
2. Set a count-down timer to the length of time you want to meditate. 10 minutes is good for beginners. Experts say it takes at least 20 minutes to get real benefits. I use the count-down timer on my cell phone.
3. Now concentrate on your breathing. Saying in on the in-breaths and out on the out-breaths. Whenever your mind drifts bring it back to focussing on your breath. To calm yourself down. You want to gradually deepen your breathing. I try to reach a count of 9 on the in-breaths, hold for 2, count to 8 while expelling and then hold for 2.
That’s it!

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Meditation, Stress Reduction