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On this walk, I noticed things I usually would have missed. I heard how a brook sounds different when you listen to its melody upstream vs. downstream. I watched how snow really falls: what seems like only a few flakes observed horizontally is a load of white when you look up into the sky. I became quiet enough to hear an animal bustling in the spongy snow covered ground. Finally, I figured out that snow was more air than water. It took an enormous amount to quench my thirst. This was far more than a lovely stroll. I actually experienced what seemed like a merging with the quiet and serenity of wintertime. To say this memory is one of my most vivid is an understatement. It ranks in intensity and depth with the birth of my son.]]>
“I’m having to deal with the reality that I saw a lot of bad things. I’m having a tough time dealing with the civilian casualties,” says Stinzo, 31. “I feel like Americans, although they seem to be informed by the news, it’s not a reality to them. I feel like most of these people in America feel like it’s watching a movie, and when the movie ends, you leave and you’re back at your normal life,” he adds. “I don’t want to tell people I’m an Iraq veteran, because immediately I’m bombarded with questions, especially the question of having to kill somebody. It’s very frustrating, and it makes me very angry inside.”]]>
Leaving the two-lane highway that leads away from the tiny village of Springwater, a dirt road takes you past a sprinkling of houses, turns into the woods. and winds its way toward the center itself. Fifty yards from a gravel parking lot partly sheltered by the surrounding woodlands, high on the hillside, is a large, modern, wooden building, with great glass windows looking south. Entering a reception area, where racks hold shoes and invite you to leave yours, you find someone from the staff there to greet you. Neatly printed white sheets of paper on a bulletin board give you your room number and job for the retreat, and you find your way to the room and roommate with whom you will spend the next week, stow away gear, make your bed, and return to the main floor of the building to connect with old friends or to meet with new faces, an activity that continues through a serve-yourself dinner of soup and bread at five o'clock. As the conversations continue, most are mindful of the silence that will ensue after the orientation at seven.]]> The coordinators of the retreat, who are not given any special standing, explain safety procedures and the general mechanics of retreat. Schedules are posted in a number of places, and one is never in doubt about what will be offered next. But here, all activities except work period are optional. You may come to the talks or not, attend sitting periods or go for a walk or take a much needed nap. No credit is given for being on one's cushion early or staying late. And if you need to communicate — and this is the only binding rule other than doing your work assignments — do it with the pencils and pads of paper that are available everywhere throughout the center. The whole retreat will take place in silence that is broken only by Toni's talks and in meetings. First the mouth, then (with luck) the mind, may give up the compulsion to chatter. Perhaps in the silence some of that automatic functioning can come into question, can be seen through, even set aside, in the course of a deeper looking. At first the silence may seem inconvenient, but in time it becomes the solid and flexible basis of the retreat experience. As the interactions that habitually confirm our self-images drop away, the ease and simplicity of moving through the day quietly gives a hint that life might be more like this all the time — not with total silence, certainly, but without that foam of language that forms on what could be the clear water of our actions. When words are exchanged, they could count for something, could be heard as well as spoken. In the meditation hall that first night, we settle onto our cushions or chairs and enter what Toni has called the work of this moment, being aware of all that is going on within and around us — the sound of the wind, the touch of the air currents within the room, the coming and going of our own breathing, and of our thoughts and impulses — just being fully present to whatever arises.... Toni is notorious in the spiritual community for her refusal to instruct people in techniques of meditation. Individuals attending the retreat may count their breaths or recite a mantra to themselves, but that is strictly their own doing (and in no way forbidden or even discouraged, really). Eventually, one comes to the point of trying the simple "awaring" that Toni speaks of so often and so passionately, allowing the mind free of technique to see, to hear, to be with what is going on. Others may call this a version of shikan taza, or maha ati, or dzogchen, but Toni declines to align this clear seeing with any tradition or technique — in fact, she seeks to free it from all traditional assumptions, inviting us to just see, just listen, not with the eyes or ears only but with all our being. A small bell sounds, and twenty-five minutes of meditation are followed by seven minutes of informal, unstylized walking meditation at a gently ambling pace. Here again, there is complete freedom. Those who want to walk more slowly or quickly, or get some of the tea always supplied in several varieties, or go to the bathroom, or stretch, or leave the meditation area altogether, peel out of and reenter the walking line, which wends its way through the room until that small bell invites those who wish to return to their places and begin sitting again. So, through several rounds, goes the first evening, ending with snacks set out in the kitchen for those who want them. Then sleep. A bell at 5:30 the next morning summons most to wakefulness, and a silent cluster coalesces and dissolves around the various pots of tea waiting, steamy, downstairs in the dining hall. At six, sitting and walking begins again, and after the morning meditation, a hearty breakfast of cooked grains and fruit, followed by a silent work period. In a single hour, virtually all the work that needs to be done at the center is accomplished in silence. Food is chopped, soup made, dishes washed, floors swept, the entire spick-and-span ambiance made even cleaner. And then this silent flurry, which itself becomes quite focusing over time, subsides into an hour in which one can rest, read, or take a walk. At ten the meditation begins again, and after the first round of sitting and walking, it is time for Toni to speak. Sitting in a place of no special prominence, eyes closed, she names the day, takes a moment of silence, and begins. Her voice is a little deep — as seems to befit this tall, vibrantly alive, white-haired woman in her early seventies — and it is full of passion and wonder, quietly urgent. Often, she speaks first of the land on which we are sitting — the rustle of the wind, bird sounds, the faint roar of a plane overhead, the warmth of the sunlight streaming through the many windows, the buzz of flies in summer, drip of rain, the sound of winter's icy branches knocking against one another. The sense of nature's presence is never far from the surface, even as the talk works its way through other concerns. In mid-sentence Toni may echo the caw of a bird from the nearby woods: no division between reflection and nature, the topic at hand and the great world in which it arises. The first day's talk almost always centers on listening, which is in a way the start and finish of Toni's work. Can we come to listening freshly, whether or not we've ever worked in this way before, whether these retreats are a new experience or a way of life for us? Can we listen in such a way that we inquire along with Toni, not listening to her as an authority, but letting her listening awaken our own? Are we agreeing, going along hoping for the best, looking for a secret, willing to accept doubtful things in order to achieve some special state? Or are we genuinely asking, sentence by sentence, "How is it with me? Is this true of me? How am I responding at this moment?" Can we attend not only to what the mind hears but also to the hearing itself, and to how the whole bodymind responds throughout its network of nerves and muscles, ideas and memories? Can we truly listen? When Toni speaks, the language she uses is the stuff of ordinary English, but one begins to notice little alterations here and there — how infrequently the personal pronouns get used, how "aware' has metamorphosed from adjective to verb, as when Toni speaks of awaring the moment in all its richness, and that awaring is seen as more primary than the individual in whom it is happening. Such language is not a repeating machine but a vehicle for discovery. Silences often punctuate the talks, and after a time there comes a silence followed by the words, "We will end here for today." But it is only the talk that is ended. The listening goes forward into the rich silence of the day's unfolding. More sitting and walking, lunch of soup and bread and fruit, abundant, a walk across the meadows or through the woodland paths that surround the center, a pause to sit and listen to the waters of the cascade or watch the clouds reflected in the pond's surface, now wrinkled, now clear. A chance to exercise and then return to the sitting room for more sitting quietly, doing nothing. Dinner, another walk perhaps, and as the angled light of sunset gives way to twilight, then darkness, the evening's rhythm of sitting and walking is again under way in the meditation hall.... There is no drive to produce an enlightenment experience, no attempt to produce any experience at all, but instead a cultivation of deep listening, deep looking into the situations in which we find ourselves, and into the very quality of looking and listening. For the very act of looking openly without preconception, without boundary, is itself an expression of the awakened mind. And this clarity is there to be found, not once and for all in some definitive crossing of a boundary, but "for moments at a time," as Toni likes to say. Neither long nor short, those moments are not to be measured in time. The grip of time itself seems to loosen as we settle into listening openly, into seeing without knowing, as one of Toni's early book titles put it. The silence becomes vibrant — itself a kind of listening — no longer a background. And the emergence from it of bird sound and plane hum, of the crunch of gravel underfoot and the grain of Toni's voice, only seem to affirm that sound and silence are one in this listening, are facets of one presence, as are those in whom the listening takes place. On the last day, instead of speaking in her own words, Toni reads — typically from the writing of Zen master Huang Po, from Krishnamurti, from the poet Mary Oliver and others, not claiming some traditional sanction but exploring the reverberations of listening in the minds and writings of others. Retreatants too begin to shift gears, as they turn back toward the world of speech and interaction that awaits them at retreat's end. What can be taken from retreat back into daily life? The alertness of listening? The openness of a mind that is not always racing — or an openness to that mind? Since none of these is actually "produced," none can be carried forward or left behind. But for almost everyone something shifts, and we leave more awake, a little wiser, knowing less than when we came. The listening that emerges while sitting quietly doing nothing is not confined to retreats. It is possible in the midst of a city as well as on a rural hillside, and it is certainly possible while reading this book. The talks gathered in these pages speak from and of that spaciousness, which can be found in our daily living. Reading and hearing these words, we can listen openly, inquire deeply, each step of the way asking, "How is it with me?" For it is our very nature, the most fundamental level of our being that speaks and listens here.]]>
Joseph Goldstein: ...This could be clarified by the distinction of two words which often get confused. You know often people understand in Buddhism that there's a great value on detachment and that sounds a little grey. You know just to be detached from everything. Robert Wright: Right. JG: That's not what the teaching is about. The teaching is about non-attachment. Detachment implies a sense of withdrawal. RW: Withdrawal from? JG: From whatever. RW: Including joy, including... JG: Anything! RW: Right. JG: It's like a pulling away from. Non-attachment doesn't imply withdrawal it simply implies not holding on. So that's a very different experience, it's a very different mind-set. That's really what we're practicing.Technical note, watching the interview on a Mac, I was only successful using the Real Player option.]]>
The Krishnamurti Foundation of America is pleased to announce our second Krishnamurti Summer Study Program for college and post-graduate college students. This is an exciting four week in-depth program that will introduce the life-changing teachings of J. Krishnamurti. The goal of this program is to help students to discover for themselves a new perceptual understanding of life based on fresh insights and self-knowledge gained directly through dialogue. We have structured the Krishnamurti Summer Study Program as a traditional college course to enable students to apply for college credit from their own particular colleges, if they wish. The program begins July 1 and runs through July 28, 2006. Each day students enter into penetrating dialogues; we watch videos of Krishnamurti in dialogue with many serious explorers of the mind, and we read from selected writings. In addition the group takes hikes into the beautiful valleys and mountain trails that surround Ojai and visits the lovely beaches of Santa Barbara. The cost of the entire program is $1300 which includes all meals, a room in Besant House on Oak Grove School's campus, all books and other materials, and all transportation within Ojai. If you know any students that might be interested in this unique program, please tell them about it. For more detailed information, and for application guidelines, please go to the KFA web site: http://www.kfa.org/student.phpI like what Mark Lee, the executive director of the KFA, has to say about the program:
Show me where you can penetrate into the mystery that is yourself, without the benefit of a gimmick, a device, a method, or some step-by-step program that claims to make it easier? Many courses are available to help improve you, promising empowerment, transcendental energy, rejuvenation, and all manner of remediation for the body and mind. However the truth is we really don’t know how to “see” ourselves, or how to get to know who we are directly. This points to one of the qualities of what Krishnamurti talked about, direct perception of who we are, without the interference of experts, or authorities.]]>
I get asked this question a lot. I suspect people ask because they think that probably everybody else can meditate but they can't. They want to be reassured that they are not alone, that there are at least some other people they can identify with, those hapless souls who were born incapable of meditating. But it isn't so simple. Thinking you are unable to meditate is a little like thinking you are unable to breathe, or to concentrate or relax. Pretty much everybody can breathe easily. And under the right circumstances, pretty much anybody can concentrate, anybody can relax. People often confuse meditation with relaxation or some other special state that you have to get to or feel. When once or twice you try and you don't get anywhere or you didn't feel anything special, then you think you are one of those people who can't do it. But, meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It's about feeling the way you feel. It's not about making the mind empty or still, although stillness does deepen in meditation and can be cultivated systematically. Above all, meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment. It's not about getting somewhere else, but about allowing yourself to be where you already are. If you don't understand this, you will think you are constitutionally unable to meditate. But that's just more thinking, and in this case, incorrect thinking at that. True, meditation does require energy and a commitment to stick with it. But then, wouldn't it be more accurate to say, "I wont stick with it," rather than, "I can't do it?" Anybody can sit down and watch their breath or watch their mind. And you don't have to be sitting. You could do it walking, standing, lying down, standing on one leg, running, or taking a bath. But to stay at it for even five minutes requires intentionality. To make it part of your life requires some discipline. So when people say they can't meditate, what they really mean is they won't make time for it, or that when they try, they don't like what happens. It isn't what they are looking for or hoping for. It doesn't fulfill their expectations. So maybe they should try again, this time letting go of their expectations and just watching.]]>
The Great Bear Rainforest is part of the largest coastal temperate rainforest remaining on Earth and supports some of the oldest surviving cultures in the Western Hemisphere. Its preservation is one of the most compelling conservation visions of our time. Today’s agreement — and the unique partnership between industry, environmentalists, governments and local communities that made it possible — marks a watershed event for both conservation and industry.Grist Magazine has a slide show with pictures of the rainforest. Tidepool has more detail on the announcement.]]>
While Western researchers are exploring the effects of meditation on physical health, Alan Wallace, a leading Tibetan scholar and one of the Dalai Lama's translators, pointed out that when faced with physical ailments, Tibetans traditionally turned to doctors or healers, not to meditation. The purpose of meditation, added the Dalai Lama, is not to cure physical ailments, but to free people from emotional suffering.While meditation has recently been gaining attention in the media as a result of medical research proclaiming its health benefits, it's good to have a reminder that meditation goes beyond stress relief. In the act of being aware, deeper forces are at work. Awareness grounds us in what we can call reality, life here and now, rather than in mental abstraction. A Voice of America article on the Dalai Lama's visit to D.C. includes this excerpt:
Mind and Life Institute chairman Adam Engle compared meditation to exercise, saying a healthy mind is as important as a healthy body. "So, in the same way that you've got a myriad of physical exercises to help your body, there are a myriad of mental trainings. And this is not well known. Most people, when they think about meditation, they think about turning your body into a pretzel and zoning out somewhere," he said. "But it is really just a word for mental training."Meditation is often presented as a form of mental training in which the mind applies its focus on an object (the breath, a sound, a mantra, a visualized image). On this site we would like to offer an alternate view of meditation as a kind of mental un-training. Instead of focusing the mind on an object, the mind can be left to rest as it is. Paltrul Rinpoche (1808-1887), a Tibetan meditation teacher, describes this poetically:
All you practitioners, male and female, who wish to realize the faultless and correct point of view, should let your mind rest fully awake in a state of unfabricated emptiness. When your mind is quiet, then rest in that quietness without trying to fabricate anything. When it doesn't think, then rest in that non-thinking. In short, no matter what takes place, let your mind rest without fabricating anything. Don't try to correct, suppress or cultivate anything. Don't try to place your mind inwardly. Don't search for an object to meditate upon outwardly. Rest in the meditator, mind itself, without fabricating anything. One doesn't find one's mind by searching for it. The mind itself is empty from the beginning. You don't need to search for it. It is the searcher himself. Rest undistractedly in the searcher himself. "Have I now grasped that which should be observed?" "Is this the right way or not?" "Is this it or not?" No matter what takes place rest in the thinker himself without fabricating anything. No matter what kind of thoughts occur, excellent or terrible, good or bad, joyful or sorrowful, don't accept or reject, but rest in the thinker himself without fabricating anything.I recently watched the documentary "Wheel of Time" by the indefatigable German director Werner Herzog. The film depicts the pilgrimage of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan Buddhists to the spot in Bodhgaya, India, where Siddhartha Gotama, more commonly known as the Buddha, was said to be enlightened. A side trip in the film covers the occasionally perilous journey of thousands of Tibetans to circumnambulate Mount Kailash, which is regarded as holy. In Bodhgaya the Dalai Lama leads the assembled monks and laity for several days in a ceremony called the Kalachakra initiation. The Dalai Lama is interviewed briefly for the film, and is his usual genial, insightful self. However, the Bodhgaya gathering itself appeared to be steeped in the rituals, tradition, and hierarchy of religion. The display evoked a spiritual striving that seemed at odds with Paltrul Rinpoche's words that, "One doesn't find one's mind by searching for it."]]>
To Krishnamurti, the key to understanding the complex relationship between fear, dependence and security lies in the fact that we irresistibly gravitate towards permanency. However, nothing in and around us stays the same; all the elements in our psyche, even our particular desires themselves, undergo change or die out altogether. Permanency is nowhere to be found. Krishnamurti suggests that in the search for a reliable source of gratification, we invent the "self" and imbue it with a sense of continuity in order to ensure that gratification can be re-lived, the pleasure repeated. Against the ever-changing backdrop of our ideas, feelings and opinions, the self appears as the most "real" and constant aspect of our psyche - all while being, paradoxically, altogether intangible. Just as the physical body is localized by its shape and outline, in the psychological sphere preferences, emotions, motives and ideas give definition to the self. The self relies on acknowledgement from its environment in order to reinforce its validity. Entire social conventions and rituals - for example, birthdays, marriage announcements, national celebrations - have been created and are being vitalized in response to this shared requirement, this common need to "place" the self in the world. We feel attracted to individuals who reinforce our self-image and shy away from others who doubt or oppose who we think we are. In either case, the fact that the "I" feels - pain or pleasure - proves that the "I" exist. Anything that threatens the gratification of this self-image sparks the emotion we know as fear. Fear, in our experience, is tied to the anticipated loss of that which we hold dear, of that on which our security depends. However, our experience is also that time heals all wounds. Nothing that we put together for our security is irreplaceable, even complete identities can be changed. Certainly, it takes time and energy to radically "re-frame" our lives, but the survival and adjustment mechanisms of thought are infinitely inventive and resourceful. Krishnamurti relates the source of fear not to the loss of any particular dependence or attachment, but to the inherent insufficiency of the self, to an awareness of a deep-rooted emptiness. All the “adornments and the renunciations that the self assumes can never cover its inward poverty”. As such the self can never be without fear; its very fabric or texture is anxiety as it tries to block out the truth of its non-existence. The root of this anxiety then is not the fear of death per se – the ultimate loss of all identifications – but stems from the underlying perception that we are already dead or, rather more precisely, that we have no substantial existence outside of thought. To Krishnamurti complete security can only be found in coming to terms with the fact that we are nothing. That is, nothing in the sense of "not a thing created by thought”.]]>
As for modern developments, in trying to formulate a definition of meditation, a useful rule of thumb is to consider all meditative techniques to be culturally embedded. This means that any specific technique cannot be understood unless it is considered in the context of some particular spiritual tradition, situated in a specific historical time period, or codified in a specific text according to the philosophy of some particular individual.Taylor is indicating that meditation doesn't exist as we popularly conceive it — in an abstract or general form — only as distinct techniques which have emerged from specific philosophical and religious backgrounds. As an example, Taylor points out that the widespread and well-regarded Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, founded at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, "combines elements of Vipassana, a Theravada form of Buddhist meditation from Burma, and Zen practices from Japanese Buddhism with Hatha yoga, a tradition from the Indian subcontinent." (An entry at TricycleBlog, the weblog of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, offers some thoughts about the MBSR program's secular presentation of Buddhist meditation.) When meditation is put under the scientific microscope, Taylor refers to two points of confrontation. The first is whether a rationally-based scientific method can adequately evaluate the realm of "intuition and insight":
Science, the product of Aristotelian thinking and the European rationalist enlightenment, now turns its attention to the intuitive transformation of personality through awakened consciousness (and other such Asian meanings of the term enlightenment). This means that the faculties of logic and sense perception, hallmarks of the scientific method, are now being trained on the personality correlates of intuition and insight, hallmarks of the traditional inward sciences of the East. To grasp what meditation is has proven to be no easy task. The underlying and usually hidden philosophical assumptions of traditional, rationalist science do not value the intuitive. They do not acknowledge the reality of the transcendent or subscribe to the concept of higher states of consciousness, let alone, in the strictest sense, even admit to the possible existence of unconscious forces active in cognitive acts of perception.Secondly, Taylor asks whether science itself will be transformed by the encounter:
The essential difficulty here is not just the reformulation of meditation techniques to fit the dictates of the scientific method, but rather what might be called a deeper, more subtle, and potentially more transformative clash of world epistemologies. It is not simply that meditation techniques have been difficult to measure but rather that, in the past, meditation has largely been an implicitly forbidden subject of scientific research. Now, however, major changes are currently underway within basic science that presage not only further evolution of the scientific method but also changes in the way science is viewed in modern culture. An unprecedented new era of interdisciplinary communication within the subfields of the natural sciences, a fundamental shift from physics to biology, and the cognitive neuroscience revolution have liberalized attitudes toward the study of meditation and related subjects. Meanwhile, the popular revolution in modern culture grounded in spirituality and consciousness is having a growing impact on traditional institutions such as medicine, religion, mental health, corporate management strategies, concepts of marriage, child rearing, and the family, and more. Increasingly, educated people want to know much more about meditation, while our traditional institutions of high culture remain unprepared as adequate interpreters.The body of "The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation" is authored by Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan. Following their own overview of the scientific studies on meditation, they provide a detailed summation of the scientific research by organizing it into three categories: physiological effects, behavioral effects, and subjective reports. The research is then broken down by category as follows:
Physiological Effects The Cardiovascular SystemRelated The Mind and Life Institute is a "working collaboration and research partnership between modern science and Buddhism."]]>
— Heart Rate — Redistribution of Blood Flow — Blood Pressure and Hypertension — Other Cardiovascular Changes The Cortical System
— EEG: Alpha Activity — EEG: Theta Activity — EEG: Beta Activity — EEG: Hemispheric Synchronization — EEG: Dehabituation — Specific Cortical Control — Other Cortical Changes Blood Chemistry
— Adrenal Hormones — Thyroid Hormones — Total Protein — Amino Acids and Phenylalanine — Plasma Prolactin and Growth Hormone — Lactate — White Blood Cells — Red Blood Cell Metabolism — Cholesterol The Metabolic and Respiratory Systems
Muscle Tension
Skin Resistance and Spontaneous GSR
Other Physiological Effects
— Brain Metabolism — Salivary Changes — Effectiveness in the Treatment of Disease — Treatment of Cancer — Changes in Body Temperature — Alleviation of Pain — Exceptional Body ControlPerceptual and Cognitive Abilities
Perceptual Ability
— Reaction Time and Perceptual Motor Skill — Deautomatization — Field Independence — Concentration and Attention — Memory and Intelligence Rorschach Shifts
Empathy
Regression in the Service of the Ego
Creativity and Self-Actualization
— Creativity — Self-Actualization
Hypnotic Suggestibility
Anxiety
Psychotherapy and Addiction
— Psychiatry and Psychotherapy — Addiction and Chemical Dependency
Sleep
Sex Role IdentificationEquanimity
Detachment
Ineffability
Bliss
Energy and Excitement
Altered Body Image and Ego Boundaries
Hallucinations and Illusions
Dreams
Synesthesia
Extrasensory Experiences
Clearer Perception
Negative Experiences
You have touched on an important and controversial topic. I participated in the TM basic course here in Finland 5 years ago. Learning the meditation technique was the good thing. However, there was already then something really strange going on in the TM movement (World Government, etc.) and I decided not to participate in the extended course. What made me sad is that there was no critical public discussion within the TM movement, all messages from gurus were taken as a given. At least to me this is a sign of a very closed religious community :-( The mantra system in TM is based on some Sanskrit words which are seen by some scholars as variant names of Hindu gods. These mantras are provided to the student by the TM teacher in a private tutoring session and the mantras are selected with a pretty simple system based on age and sex of the meditation student. On the Internet (e.g. Freedom of Mind Center) and in many analytic books covering meditation movements there is this list of TM mantras available. (Please, make your own search, during my TM basic course I had to make a promise that I will not reveal my mantra!). When I later heard that the mantra I was given may be a Hindu god name variant, I felt a bit odd. Joke: In Finnish language this mantra given to me does not mean anything imaginable and I don't know much about Indian belief systems, so hopefully there is no harm done to my head ;-) Talking about TM in schools: I very much encourage teaching meditation in schools but I find TM meditation very unsuitable in its present form. Group meditation is a great experience and at school it could remove anxiety and stress. At least in Finnish schools children between 12-18 years are very closed and separated mentally from each other. In that sense meditation could help them to be more open, creative, and enable them to smile :-) However, meditation has such a bad reputation especially among some praying, religious people that they are afraid of it. (Some people just don't get it that in meditation you do not pray or beg anything ;-) So, let's hope there will be a truly independent meditation technique on the way to schools and workplaces. Could it be based on ideas of Jiddu Krishnamurti or some other positively critical thinkers? Take care, Mikko A. Innovation, Creativity and Learning Researcher Beyond Creativity P.S. Thank you for this fantastic blog, Meditation. It has given me so many insights. Please, allow people to comment on blog entries more easily :-)Mikko also requested that comments be allowed on blog entries. By way of explanation, I haven't included a comment section on the blog due to concerns about the tenor of the discussion. I've noticed that internet message boards about meditation, ironically, attract posters who are more interested in opinionated assertions than constructive dialogue. However, emails are always welcome, and I thank you for reading.]]>
® Transcendental Meditation, TM, TM-Sidhi, Maharishi Ayur-Veda, Maharishi Ayurveda, Science of Creative Intelligence, Maharishi, Maharishi Sthapatya Veda, Maharishi Global Construction, Maharishi Yoga, Maharishi Yagya, Maharishi Vedic Astrology, Maharishi Jyotish, Maharishi Gandharva Veda, Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health, Maharishi Vedic Vibration Technology, Maharishi Instant Relief, Instant Relief, Maharishi Rejuvenation, Maharishi Rasayana Program, Maharishi Vedic Management, Maharishi Corporate Development Program, Consciousness-Based, Maharishi Vedic University, Maharishi Vedic School, Maharishi Vedic Center, Maharishi Ayur-Veda School, Maharishi Ayur-Veda University, Maharishi Ayur-Veda College, Maharishi Ayur-Veda Foundation, Maharishi Ayur-Veda Medical Center, Maharishi University of Management, Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, Maharishi Medical Center, Maharishi Vedic Medical Center, Maharishi Medical College, Maharishi Vedic, Maharishi Vedic Medicine, Maharishi Vedic Psychology, Maharishi Self-Pulse, Maharishi Heaven on Earth, Maharishi Center for Excellence in Management, Maharishi Vedic Management, Maharishi Master Management, Natural Law Based Management, Maharishi Corporate Revitalization Program, Maharishi Global Administration through Natural Law, Maharishi Vedic Development Fund, Thousand-Headed Purusha, Maharishi Thousand-Headed Purusha, Maharishi Purusha, Purusha, Thousand-Headed Mother Divine, Mother Divine, Ideal Girls' School, 24 Hour Bliss, Spiritual University of America, Breath of Serenity, Maharishi Amrit Kalash, Maharishi College of Vedic Medicine, Vedic Science, Maharishi Vedic Science, Maharishi Vedic Observatory, Vastu Vidya, Maharishi Vastu, Time Zone Capital, Council of Supreme Intelligence, Prevention Wing of the Military, are registered or common law trademarks licensed to Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation and used under sublicense.Other than describing it as a "simple, natural, effortless, easily learned technique," the TM website gives no specific detail on the technique itself. The site states, "The Transcendental Meditation technique must be learned personally from a certified teacher of the Transcendental Meditation program. The technique cannot be learned from a book, video or audio tape." The initial course of instruction, which comprises four 1-2 hour sessions, costs $2500. Subsequent courses in "advanced techniques" are charged at the same rate. The TM movement has numerous critics, some of whom are former students and teachers of TM. These critics have made detailed information on the organization and the technique available online. Trancenet offers a comprehensive overview of TM, including statements by prominent former members of the movement. Meditation Information Network describes itself as "supporting critical examination of Transcendental Meditation and the programs associated with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi." Falling Down the TM Rabbit Hole is maintained by Joe Kellett, a former TM teacher, whose purpose is to explain "How Transcendental Meditation really works, a critical opinion." Each of these sites reveal the TM technique itself — the repetition of a mantra derived from the Hindu tradition. These critics argue that despite TM's claim to be non-religious and non-sectarian, the TM movement is based in a belief-system and religiously motivated. ]]>
To love anything beautiful in a country is normal and natural, but when that love is used by exploiters in their own interest it is called nationalism. Nationalism is fanned into imperialism, and then the stronger people divide and exploit the weaker, with the Bible in one hand and a bayonet in the other. The world is dominated by the spirit of cunning, ruthless exploitation, from which war must ensue. This spirit of nationalism is the greatest stupidity. Every individual should be free to live fully, completely. As long as one tries to liberate one's own particular country and not man, there must be racial hatreds, the divisions of people and classes. The problems of man must be solved as a whole, not as confined to countries or peoples.]]>