Influential Teachers, Writers, and Books
Developing a skill requires credible teachers. It is extremely important, though, not to substitute reading about meditation as a substitute for practicing. Take care, especially when you are starting out, to make direct experience a priority over acquiring theory. Imagine reading about playing the piano without ever running your fingers across the keys. This is not to say you should not read what the experts have to say. Both are necessary. But if you discover a few minutes in your day and have to choose one, go with direct experience. In the long run, this emphasis will ground the exploration of theory and make it much more practical.Each of these teachers emphasize different aspects and strategies for paying closer attention to normal experience while interfering with it less. Look for an approach that feels comfortable while requiring effort. Look for a style that emphasizes both the short-term and long-term benefits of developing mindfulness skills. Look for what motivates you to practice with the same amount of consistency required to master the game of golf, tend a thriving garden, raise a child, or build a house.
Shinzen Young is my primary teacher because his approach consistently provides me with a variety of tools and strategies, each designed to cultivate the skills of concentration, sensory clarity, and equanimity. I find that they lend themselves to bringing these same skills out into the regular activities of ordinary life. In fact, my introduction to his approach was with a cassette tape from the library about bringing mindfulness into physical exercise called Meditation in the Zone. After listening to The Science of Enlightenment, I decided to attend one of his retreats and discovered that his style really fit my interests, experiences, and personality. In general, his approach is about breaking down sensory experiences into their component parts with an emphasis on the flow of experience we tend to interpret as a fixed self. He also takes care to rigorously clarify the definition of his terminology, to draw analogies from western science, and to point out commonalities among the contemplative aspects of the world's religious traditions. Good places to start include The Beginner's Guide to Meditation, Break Through Pain, and Break Through Difficult Emotions. Shinzen has recently begun offering phone retreats through Basic Mindfulness site.
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I tend to be drawn to teaching perspectives that clarify how all of us have the capacity for deep insights and the practical value of direct experience. Adyashanti is an example of someone who is convinced that the the ability to appreciate deep truths and paradoxes isn't reserved for exceptional people in exceptional circumstances. He puts an emphasis on letting things be as they are and argues that people tend to forget this core aspect of the mindfulness path, that we tend to get sidetracked by the various tools and techniques and forget to just rest in the awareness that contains our individual sense of a separate self. You can get a taste of his unique teaching style through brief articles on his web page, the audiobook Spontaneous Awakening, and books such as True Meditation and Emptiness Dancing.
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I felt such a resonance with Pema Chödrön's teachings on shenpa that I named my blog after her examination of this tendency to get hooked by things and divert our awareness with whatever compulsive behaviors we've cultivated. She covers this in depth in her audiobook Getting Unstuck: Breaking Your Habitual Patterns and Encountering Naked Reality. She is also known for her accessible teachings on the compassion practice of tonglen and the mind training strategies of lojong. She has written a number of books on very practical aspects of mindfulness such as The Places that Scare You, When Things Fall Apart, Always Maintain a Joyful Mind and Practicing Peace in Times of War.
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Poet, writer, teacher, and Zen Buddhist priest, Norman Fischer, has a knack for applying Zen to issues of Western culture and everyday life in the world. He teaches mindfulness at Google through their Search Inside Yourself program. In addition to his regular work at the San Francisco Zen Center, and with the Everyday Zen Center, he has taught extensively on the relationship between Buddhist and Jewish practice. He teaches Buddhist principles to business people, Buddhist compassion-in-action to lawyers and conflict resolvers, and poetry writing and appreciation to children and adults. He's led workshops at Esalen Institute in California, the Open Center in New York City, and Hollyhock Farm, in British Columbia, and teaches Zen regularly at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, as well as in Canada, Mexico, and Europe. He has also participated with the Dalai Lama in conferences on Buddhist Christian dialog and non-violence. His books are saturated with practical wisdom. Check out , Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up, and Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms. Find quotes and excerpts from these books on my blog.
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I've recently been listening to an interesting series of talks on the four foundations of mindfulness by Joseph Goldsten called Abiding in Mindfulness (Volume One: The Body and Volume Two: On Feeling, the Mind & Dhamma). He is one of the founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts after first becoming interested in Buddhism as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand in 1965 and subsequently studying with teachers in India, Burma, and Tibet. He is co-author (with Jack Kornfield) of Seeking the Heart of Wisdom and both the Insight Meditation Kit and a twelve-month correspondence course on insight meditation with Sharon Salzberg.
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My good friend and gifted yoga teacher Kit Spahr recommended Jon Kabat-Zinn's book Wheverever You Go, There You Are when I became curious about the meditational aspect of yoga. It continues to be one that I tend to share with people who have a fresh interest in exploring meditation. The wisdom is immediately recognizable. The chapters are short and accessible. The insights are directly applicable to regular, modern life. Dr. Kabat-Zinn, who received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT, has had a significant role in bridging the distance between contemplative traditions and scientific research. His book Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
continues to be considered a mindfulness meditation classic. Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness, published in 2005, builds on his previous work and offers new practical strategies for bringing mindfulness into daily life.
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I have a special appreciation for Phillip Moffitt who lead the first silent meditation retreat I attended. I had been so impressed by his articles in the Yoga Journal that I signed up for a retreat. This was where I discovered that the silent part is not the biggest challenge -- even for a talker like me. In fact, the silence felt like a luxury. It was the meditation that provided the real challenge. One of the first things I learned was that if you advertise around that you are going on a silent retreat, you are apt to be preoccupied with how you are going to describe it when you return. I also learned that exercising the impulse of compassion by imagining others being safe, healthy, happy, and comfortable had an amazing ability to decrease the suffering I experienced during longer sitting periods.
I continue to digest the lessons from that first retreat. What I remember the most, however, is when he recommended that I experiment with this notion of extending loving-kindness towards others for a few minutes each day. "Try it for a couple of years and see if you notice any difference in how you feel toward yourself and others." It was this kind of advice that opened my eyes to the wisdom of these strategies. They aren't like the instant fixes people are constantly trying to sell us, but ancient wisdom about human nature and ways to cultivate a more complicated and mature emotional palate. Look for his book, Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering. |
Sharon Salzberg is another one of the founders of the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. She is well-known for her books and teachings on metta or loving-kindness meditation. I listened to Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness when I was training for a marathon. This was the practice which Phillip Moffitt suggested that I experiment with for a couple of years. I continue to find this practice to be a practical and powerful strategy for gradually eroding the walls between myself and other people which I tend not to even be aware of until they have begun to recede. Someone once told me that vipassana is like stripping the old paint from the siding and metta is like applying the new coat. You can check out this deceptively simple-sounding technique at Beliefnet. I also thoroughly enjoyed her refreshing exploration of trusting one's own experience in Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience.
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I had the opportunity to attend a weekend retreat in Ohio a few years ago facilitated by Amita Schmidt. I was moved by her wisdom, apparent groundedness, and humility. Her story is about overcoming a significant family history of depression and hopelessness. She has found a way to navigate these dangerous waters and emerge on the other side with a palpable joy. Amita wrote a biography of Dipa Ma, a female Buddhist master from Bangladesh. She co-wrote an article for Tricycle Magazine called Healing Trauma with Meditation and makes some of her talks on depression available on her website. "Depression and anxiety are visitors," she says, "They are not your true nature."
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