Buddhist Teachings

  So after having meditated for some months, you might want to get additional information on how to make your meditation practicr more methodical and profound. I stumbled across the homepage of the Insight Meditation Center where you can find a lot of information and instructions about meditation. Well, you can find a lot of information about meditation online, but what made the difference is that there is a free 6 week training course in mindfulness that you can either do totally on your own or you can also do it with a personal assistant that you can ask for support during your 6 weeks of the course. How it works is that you sign up on that page and when the course starts, you will get every sunday a link to the 80 minute audio file that you can download as well as transcripts and additional handouts. If you have chosen that you want to be assisted, you will get a person assigned to you, that you can contact once a week during a predetermined time, if you have questions about t...

  Concentration, Insight and Loving-Kindness: The Swiss Army Knife of Meditation Practice Today I want to shine a light on basic meditation practices, how they work and why you should use them. I would consider this to be the tip of the iceberg and just a first introduction. There are basically 3 types of meditations for different purposes, which I would consider to be the "Swiss Army Knife" of meditation. Just like this multi tool has different blades for different purposes, these 3 meditation techniques have certain use cases. And like a Swiss Army Knife, they should be seen as a package, they last you a life time and never go out of fashion.  1) Concentration Meditation helps you to focus, relax and enjoy yourself (Samatha) Concentration Meditation (Samatha) uses an object to focus the attention on. It is like one of those old school Maglite flashlights, which you can twist at the top to bundle all of the light in one spot in the distance. There are various objects that ca...