By Reginald Ray — 2002
Many Western Budddhists, says Reginald Ray, perpetuate the mind/body, secular/sacred dualism that has marked our culture since early Christianity.
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CLEAR ALL
A panel discussion with Phillip Moffitt, Cyndi Lee, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Reggie Ray. Introduction by Anne Carolyn Klein.
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Meditation is a mind and body practice that has a long history of use for increasing calmness and physical relaxation, improving psychological balance, coping with illness, and enhancing overall health and well-being.
Being mindful of the body is a profound—though often overlooked—opportunity to deepen our meditation and develop our insight, says Phillip Moffitt. Meditating on the body, we discover all four of the Buddha’s noble truths.
Through the practice of meditation, there are certain changes that happen in the mind. One of the most important changes is that you become master of your mind.
Like many Westerners, I always assumed that meditation was a “spiritual” phenomenon, which I took to mean that it somehow had to do with realms beyond the physical.
One of the most in-depth meditation studies to date shows that different practices have different benefits.
It’s less than we think. It’s far more than we know. It’s who we are but it’s not. Contemplate the deeper reality of the body with Buddhist teacher Norman Fischer.
If you approach your practice as a path of love, the rhythms of life will teach you moment by moment how to proceed. Each little discovery about what breathing feels like will give you more access to your inner life and the secret power of recovery built into your body.
Every day, we have to do the impossible. We have to submit to the magic reboot of sleep and then get up and line up all our selves into a unified being and get on with it. Nearly every day, new qualities of our selves come online to join in with all the others. This is a creative act.
To make sense of the movements of life, many ancient traditions use paradigms and models that in English are translated as “energy.” The Hindu traditions often use the term Shakti, that without which nothing happens. This refers to the feminine aspect of the Divine.