Meditation Notes

The Toronto Star reports on two Buddhist researchers from the University of Toronto who asked a group of meditators to keep a Mindfulness Diary in which they rated “their meditating behaviour as soon as they open their eyes and stop practising.” They found a huge amount of variability in the responses, but discovered [...]

Beliefnet has an interesting and unexpected interview with musician Lou Reed about his latest album, Hudson River Wind Meditations. Reed has quit smoking and taken up tai chi and meditation. On the form of meditation he practices, he says ‘My original meditation was taken from an herbalist acupuncturist named Dr. Shelly Peng. The [...]

In this follow-up video, Gudo Nishijima explains the meaning of zazen. He gives more practical advice on sitting (”it is necessary for us to practice zazen two times a day, at least.”) and delves into some of the scientific understanding of meditation that has been uncovered in the 20th and 21st centuries.
.

In this video Gudo Nishijima, a zen meditation teacher in his 80s shows the proper way to practice zazen. What I find interesting about this video is the amount of time he devotes to the purely practical instructional aspects of sitting. Unfortunately the camera is not mounted perfectly horizontally, so Master Nishijima is [...]

This is a good brief introduction to Vipassana meditation with an overview of the process and goals of meditation.

A couple of nice photographs of group meditation spaces:

The Circle by notasif

Meditation by holisticgeek

A new study, with a synopsis available here, has found that after 3 months of intense Vipassana meditation training (10-12 hours each day) practitioners participating in the “attentional blink” test showed substantially improved detection of the second target in the test. 16 out of 23 of the novice group, who were given a one [...]

An interesting article from the International Herald Tribune about Jim Gordon’s (from the Center for Mind-Body Medicine) attempts to teach meditation classes in the midst of heavy fighting between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza City.

A new University of Pennsylvania study has found that “even for those new to the practice, meditation enhanced performance and the ability to focus attention.” The study, which will be published in the journal Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, suggests meditation as a means of improving focus and cognitive ability. The study found [...]