May I be an isle for those who yearn for land,
A lamp for those who long for light;
For all who need a resting place, a bed;
For those who need a servant, may I be their slave.

May…[Read more]

I might be able to add my two cents regarding slouching: when I started doing sitting practice I encountered the same problem: my posture tended to fall into a slouch after only a few minutes of sitting, then I’d be occupied with correcting for that through the whole sit. What helped a lot with that was doing some exercises for my…[Read more]

Edit: Edited, just to try out the editing function.
My life just became better 🙂

first off: thanks for everything. This is a good and useful place to be.

Just one gripe: I seem to be unable to edit my own posts (after having posted them that is).
Whith me being a somewhat sloppy formatter/writer this leaves a good percentage of typos/less than perfectly worded paragraphs and whatnot on the forums:…[Read more]

first of all: great that you’re here! Congrats on starting a meditation practice.
I might be mistaken, but training the mind appears to be the wisest thing homo sapiens sapiens can do.
So: keep at it, you’re totally in the right place and doing the right stuff!

Let’s see if I can be of some assistance here:

1. The issue with your…[Read more]

I can not offer any scholarly opinion on the topic, but my personal experience tells me that no: compassion actually grows. As to why, here’s what I experienced:

Long before you start to experience the fact that whatever you think of as “You” is actually a construct of your brain evolved because it’s useful to think of yourself of…[Read more]

Greetings,
Florian

so I just stumbled into this meditative state which I think qualifies as (or at least has characteristics of) Shikantaza (or Resting Awareness/Silent Illumination) and wondered if anyone has any ideas or information about what I can do with it and how to best use it too perfect my Samatha.

Fist some words on where I stand at the…[Read more]

Just ran into your post and wanted to reply affirmatively to you and Tony-James:
I observed the very same thing as you do.
A certain low amount of caffeine will have positive, energizing effects on me, but as soon as I consume too much it’ll ruin my day:
Anxiousness and irritability followed by feeling worn out and overly tired…[Read more]

ich lebe in Nürnberg.

Count me in.

Grüße
Florian

P.S.: gonna be offline for the next few days, but definitely interested.

thanks for pointing out the book.

Actually, I think something I read in the fifth Interlude (on the Mind System Model) about Metacognitive Introspective Awareness plays part in the concept I had when starting this thread (page 212):

“Metacognitive introspective awareness is not just awareness of individual thoughts, memories, and…[Read more]

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to respond.

My question is not so much about meditation practice per se, I’m rather looking for a conceptual framework here.

(To give you a bit of background information about where I’m coming from with this question:
I’m working with TMI, and find myself in stage four – Mindwandering…[Read more]

When observing my mind there seem to be various “categories” of discoursive events happening:

1. There’s your classic discoursive “thought” – the kind that I used to think of being “me”: Some pre-formulation of…[Read more]