Teach Yourself Walking Meditation (video)

Carole Fogarty (thehealthylivinglounge.com) and Wisdom Quarterly

“Make the effort to let go of your worries” - Thay (Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, Walking Meditation DVD/CD-ROM).

Walking meditation is the perfect alternative if body and mind are too restless to sit and rest in stillness. Its also a lovely change from the usual, less active meditation practices. No great skill or understanding is required. Simply give attention to (just knowing, not evaluating or thinking about) the breath, foot steps, or the ground. Adjust to a slow, gentle pace. Wherever one can walk, one can meditate along the way.

Healing

• Body and mind become one (united by breath).
• Calm strong emotions by living in the present moment(rather than reflecting on the past or worrying about possible futures).
• Focus on the internal world in the senses of the body rather than the outer.
• Draw excess energy and emotions (stray thoughts upsetting the heart/mind) out of the head down into the body.

“Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.” - Thay

(SoundsTrueVideos) Free weekly wisdom. From Walking Meditation: What if every step taken deepened our connection with all life and imprinted peace, joy, and serenity on Earth?

Deepen the practice with the highly recommend book Walking Meditation by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and his student Nguyen Anh-Huong. It is short, simple, and very easy to read with super clear instructions and an added bonus -- an instructional DVD and a CD that includes 5 walking meditations. Remember, there is no goal to walking meditation. The destination is here and now...one breath at a time.

“Walking meditation is meditation while walking.” - Thay

4 Key Steps

1. Breathing - stay aware of what is happening now. What is happening? Breathing. Breathe using a gentle, full belly (not a full chest) to calm thoughts, relaxing the hips, elbows, muscles, legs, face, eyes, ears, and brain. Maybe place hands on the belly to feel the rise and fall (optional). Breath in “resting,” breath out “softening.”
2. Walking - with soft eyes, moving slowly and gently. Feel the sensation of each foot as it presses down on the earth. Notice it as it lifts up, touches the ground, and is lifted up again. Follow every foot step with mind and breath.
3. Counting - if staying focused on each step is a struggle, count the number of steps to each inhale and each exhale. This encourages attention (discourages distraction).
4. Smiling - smiles, half smiles, upside down frowns, grins... It is said a smile brings lightness to the feet, inviting the body to relax, helping us settle more easily into walking meditation.
   

“Don’t bring anxiety and stress to the ground with your feet.” - Thay

(Ven. Yuttadhammo) This is the third in a series of six videos on how to practice meditation without religious dogma or spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

• The Zens (jhanas) of Buddhist meditation
• The Benefits of Walking Meditation (Ven. U Silananda)
• Cankama: Walking Meditation (Buddha Space Blog)

Science: Laughter Really is Good Medicine

(SkypeLaughterChain.com) A contagious language we all understand that brings us closer.

Scientists Hint at Why Laughter Feels So Good
Text by James Gorman (New York Times, Sept. 13, 2011)

Laughter is regularly promoted as a source of health and well being, but it has been hard to pin down exactly why laughing until it hurts feels so good. The answer, reports Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford, is not the intellectual pleasure of cerebral humor, but the physical act of laughing.... ha, ha, ha... endorphins... “Laughter is very weird stuff, actually”... laughter contributes to group bonding and may have been important in the evolution of highly social humans. Social laughter, Dr. Dunbar suggests, relaxed and contagious, is “grooming at a distance,” an activity that fosters closeness in a group the way one-on-one grooming, patting and delousing promote and maintain bonds between individual primates of all sorts. More

The Four Truths of Recovery

(thesun.co.uk)

Amy Winehouse was a Jewish-Buddhist. But it was a first when she pulled out of a festival [Rock En Seine Festival in Paris] because she was in a state of Buddhist relaxation. The singer has been trying to find peace in her chaotic life by chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.

For those who have alcohol, illegals drugs, or engage in addictive routines to unwind, Amy found a better option: Nicherin Buddhism, perhaps the most questionable form of devotional "value creation."

The Sun quotes a source as saying: "One of her musicians introduced Amy to Buddhist chanting. She chants for ten minutes in the mornings and just before she sleeps.

"Amy has also been watching the interview clip of Tina Turner chanting on YouTube [on Larry King Live] and she reckons it's already affecting her in a positive way.

"She has a string of Buddhist beads that she chants with, which she keeps in a red silk scarf.

"She says chanting is filling her life with positivity while she is trying to sort herself out." More

Buddhist 12 Steps

AgainstTheStream.org

1. Addiction is Suffering.

• Understand, acknowledge, admit, and accept all of the ways drugs, alcohol, and so on have caused suffering in our lives. Action: Write an in-depth and detailed inventory of the suffering you have experienced in association with your addictions.

2. The Cause of Addiction is Craving.

• Understand that all forms of addiction have their roots in the natural human tendency to crave for life to be more pleasurable and less painful than it actually is. The substances we have craved and become addicted to must be abandoned and renounced. Action: Investigate, analyze, and share the inventory with your mentor or teacher and come to understand the cause of your addiction/suffering.

3. Recovery is Possible.

• Freedom from the suffering caused by addiction is attainable, IF we are ready and willing to follow the eightfold path. Action: Study and apply the Buddhist teachings on enlightenment (awakening) and eventually you will come to a verified-faith in the path of recovery/enlightenment through the actions you take on the path.

4. The 8-Fold Path to Recovery.

• The eight factors or folds of the path are to be developed, experienced and penetrated. This is a path of action not blind faith, recovery will only come from taking the right actions. This is not a linear path, it does not have to be taken in order, rather all of the factors will need to be developed and applied simultaneously. This is a guide to having a life that is free from addiction, not a process that we go through once or twice, the eight folds of recovery will have to be maintained through out one's life.

In search of the world's funniest joke

Wisdom Quarterly (INVESTIGATION)

Monty Python introduces the theoretical consequences if such a joke were ever found before science reveals the answer. "Laughter is the best medicine," of course. And those benefits obtain even if the laughter, at first, is forced. This explains the growing popularity of Laughter Yoga. Prof. Richard Wiseman explains the submission and voting process that collected 40,000 jokes. Buddhism is wonderful because it keeps its sense of humor in the face of all.

Prof. Wiseman explains comedy to comedian Lewis Black (History Channel)

• "The Jerry Seinfeld of Buddhism": Ajahn Brahm
• Wes Nisker's crazy cosmos, the levity in Buddhism
• VIDEO: Arj Barker's "The Sickest Buddhist"
• Comedy Central: Jokes about Buddhists
• BUDDHIST JOKES the Dalai Lama doesn't get
  

Jokes.com
Arj Barker - Sickest Buddhist
comedians.comedycentral.com
Jokes Joke of the Day Funny Jokes