Inside Outside

I posted the following in 2015 originally, but decided to re-post it, because I think the monk, and the book it refers to – Handbook for Mankind – are wonderful sources of information, particularly if you’re beginning to practice meditation. I hope you get as much from the book as I did. When I went to Thailand in 2000 to do the first of many silent retreats to train in Vipassana meditation…

Question: I suffer from chronic fatigue, and meditation has been recommended, as was your blog. I went through your posts and though it was very interesting, I didn’t find anything specifically dealing with meditation as healing force. So I’m wondering what your view on this might be. Reply: This is a difficult question to reply to, largely because, as much as I have used meditation and…

Most people, when they decide to try meditation, assume it’ll be easy. And the books and spruikers and ads for meditation and mindfulness classes certainly make meditation seem easy. After all, how hard can it be to sit down, zone out and be peaceful?So they sign up and begin meditating – they sit down in the class, or listen to the app – and at first, meditation does indeed seem easy. As mind…

Question: I go to a Zen teacher here in Seattle. He tells us that we should observe our thoughts during meditation? I’m not sure what this means. How can observe my thoughts without thinking them? And if I’m sitting thinking all the time, how is this meditation? Answer: Perhaps you teacher is being a little glib in his directive that you should ‘observe thinking’. I think he should have been be…

Everything we are, and everything we do, arises from a habit.All our skills and abilities, our cravings and addictions, whether good or bad, as well as our physical form, our emotional profile and our genetically derived predispositions and abilities – all habits, either learned or innate.And those habits have been created from a combination of nature and nurture – that is, our genetic history…

What I’m about to write about is rather a sensitive subject, which a lot of people disagree on. So as you read on, please remember, it’s simply my personal view, presented as something to consider. I’m not trying to convince anybody. So if, as you read, you don’t agree, then move on. I recently met up with a friend I hadn’t seen for over two decades. She looked terribly ill. When I asked if she…

In bumbling through YouTube last night, I happened upon an extraordinary video. I say ‘extraordinary’ because the information it conveys is so unusually lucid – particularly given the subject of the video is one that is often misinterpreted and left unclear. The video covers the four Noble truths of the Buddhist path: the way to Nibbana – or enlightenment – and it’s well worth…

Everything we are, and everything we do, arises from a habit. All our skills and abilities, and our cravings and addictions, whether good or bad, as well as our physical form, our emotional profile and our genetically derived predispositions and abilities – it’s all habits, either learned or innate. And those habits have been created from a combination of nature and nurture – that is, our…

Hi Roger, I’m hoping you can help me with a confusing thing that happens when I meditate. I go to a local meditation group and the teacher told us to watch our thoughts while staying detached from it. This doesn’t make sense. How can I watch my thoughts with the same mind that’s thinking my thoughts, without thinking about them? Any input would help because I like the idea of being able to…

I think there’s two things to consider here: When I say ‘let go’, I’m not saying ‘stop’. I’m saying don’t cling to anything, whether it feels good, or bad. If you feel good, that’s fine. Allow yourself feel good until you don’t. But when the good feeling passes away, as it will – then let it go without a look back. Don’t pine for it or try to make it stay, and don’t try to force it to return.And…

A few years ago, (well, almost a decade ago – golly how time flies), after I closed Practical Meditation & Counselling and began travelling (again), I recorded the entire meditation as a series of MP3’s. My mission was to document all the information and the exercises I used to teach, so that people could use them to practice on their own. Some years later, after I’d finished writing ‘Being…

We all have our sense of what feels normal – which includes those habits we’ve become so used to we don’t notice them. And because we don’t notice them, we don’t examine those habits until they become a problem. Trouble is, because some of our life problems arise from habits that are once or twice removed from what seems wrong, we can’t even identify the underlying habits. This particularly…