SkillfulMeditation.org
Beginner's mind is vast and open. We spend the rest of our lives learning to unlearn (mumzine)One's experience of meditation defines meditation
The Skillful Meditation Project offers an approach to Buddhist meditation based on what people actually experience when they meditate.
This approach is called Recollective Awareness Meditation, as it involves recollecting what happens in one’s meditation sittings.
One can meditate in any manner one chooses in this approach or use the basic instructions suggested for beginning meditation students. A website is available for exploration, with a
Meditation page that is particularly useful.
The site has articles and short audio clips on an
unstructured approach to meditation, ways of recollecting one's sitting, and background on this approach and how it was developed.
Available from Shambhala Publications (or from Amazon at a 33% discount off the list price) is a book that explains in detail. And there is more about the book at unlearningmeditation.com and blog.unlearningmeditation.com.
Jason Siff's 2011 Retreat Schedule
- June 24-July 3, Spokane, Washington
- July 29-August 3, Cloud Mountain Retreat Center, Washington
- August 18-21, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Massachusetts
- August 27-28, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- October 19-30, Mandala Center, New Mexico
"If you can meditate and be mindful for just one minute then just repeat that 60 times, and you have meditated for an hour!" But don't get ahead of yourself. Start with a minute. The "secret" to meditation is to not think by focusing on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. Once settling, centering, and focusing becomes strong, then systematic mindfulness exercises can be taken up. They are of little value in producing their enlightening result (insight, vipassana) without a firm foundation in serenity and right-concentration (samma samadhi) to the point of access or absorption (jhana).
