Category: Zen practices
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Mindful Listening: A Meditation Game
Read time 4 minutes. Mindful listening is a stand alone article in our Blocked Energy series. We’ve spoken often about the importance of accepting and allowing. Most of the time the focus has been on mental attitude—how we relate to thoughts, how we lean into letting go. Today, let’s turn the lens slightly and look at the…
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Everyday Zen: 5 Tools Of Awareness Beyond Conditioning
Read time 7 minutes. Awareness Beyond Conditioning is a stand alone article in our Everyday Zen series. Today’s lesson is one we can get excited about. It’s where the knowledge we’ve been gathering begins to shift into practice—into something lived. Many of Charlotte Joko Beck’s teachings turn on Zazen, the seated meditation practice central to…
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Acceptance Meditation Practice: Die While You’re Alive
Read time 4 minutes. Acceptance Meditation Practice is a stand alone article in our series regarding Acceptance. Today’s lesson turns to an old and powerful meditation technique: the practice of contemplating death and mortality. On the surface, it may sound grim. Yet, as with so many Zen practices, what seems dark at first becomes a gateway…
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Active Meditation Practice: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Read time 3 minutes. This active meditation practice is a stand alone article in our series regarding mindfulness and meditation. In earlier lessons I spoke at length about the practice of letting go. Today we merge that theme with our discussion of active meditation. The practice I’ll outline is simple: it can be done in leisure time,…
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Practice of Letting Go: Looking Within
Read time 3 minutes. What do we mean by ‘practice of letting go?’ This stand alone article is part of our letting go series. Over the past few lessons, we’ve unpacked the layered nature of emotional activity. We explored mood as the ego’s barometer, emotions as the voice of instinct, and the feedback loops fueled by imagination.…
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Observing and Accepting Meditation Technique In Review
Read time 2 minutes. Observing and accepting meditation sits with the ego, not against it. This is the final article in our self-control series. Hopefully, by now, you’ve had a chance to experiment with this practice. Just a simple itch. A flicker of discomfort. A moment of stillness. What did it show you? At face…
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Observing and Accepting Meditation Technique: Sitting With an Itch
Read time 2 minutes. A quirky and effective observing and accepting meditation technique for using physical sensation to examine resistance, ego, and true acceptance. This stand alone article is part of our series regarding self-control. Today’s lesson is one of the most direct, experiential practices I can offer. So far, we’ve been circling around some…
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A Basic Mindfulness Practice with Radical Impact
Read time 2 minutes. A basic mindfulness practice that begins with a simple question. This is the first stand alone article in our series regarding mindfulness and meditation. Today we shall consider one of the earliest and most powerful practices:Whenever something annoys you, frustrates you, offends you—ask yourself: What do I really want to have happen…
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Mind Means Disturbance—and That’s Not a Problem
Read time 3 minutes. Turn overthinking into a useful tool—an alert for mindfulness into peace of mind. A common misconception of Zen training is that we’re supposed to rid ourselves of all thoughts and emotions. But if we make that the goal, we’ll likely end up frustrated. As Nisargadatta Maharaj says in I Am That, “There…