Maintaining daily practice is hard. Finding others in the area you live to practice with helps. I count myself as lucky to have found a group of meditators in my area who gave me inspiration and a place to sit with others. Among them is Colin who I consider to be a major reason why Vipassana meditation …
Category: Observations
Our Teacher Has Passed
S.N. Goenka, my Vipassana teacher, has passed. I've decided to wait a few weeks before writing about this because I feel like it's not my role to tell people how they're supposed to feel about his passing. I do feel that it's appropriate to share my thoughts now that everyone has had a chance to process …
Life Chooses My Path
What do I want to do with my life? What is my passion? How can I make a difference? How do I meet my potential? I have asked myself these types of questions over and over again throughout my life. With Vipassana, now I'm wonder if I had the questions all wrong. Growing up as …
Remembering Goenka
I look at this picture and cannot help but smile. From it, the sensations I feel remind me of the warm feeling of love I had as a young boy looking at my grandfather. It makes me think of the time when everything was new and an adventure. I remember during this time recognising how …
Giving Up Alcohol
The 5th precept - abstaining from intoxicants- has always been a part of Vipassana that I have conveniently forgotten. My job, the people in my life, where I live - key elements that make up who I am, tend to revolve around alcohol. Being able to choose from time to time to enjoy a good whiskey or …
Serving on a ten day course
I was able to arrive a day and half before the course began to help set up. I prefer landing in the almost ghost town like feel between courses, rather than the hustle and bustle of everyone arriving and settling in. When asked by the management to go into household my ego reacted. I had …
Initial findings from Vipassana meditation related survey
As I mentioned in some of earlier posts, I am conducting a research to understand the role of Vipassana meditation in enhancing the emotional intelligence. In this post, I would like to share some preliminary findings from survey and personal interviews with Vipassana practitioners. The survey to test of some of the hypothesis has been …
Continue reading Initial findings from Vipassana meditation related survey
The Path Is Changing
The world gives me a problem, and I need to find a solution. That's the mindset I've used for a long time. When it came to people involved in a problem, I needed to find the right words or listen in the right way to help us agree on the same solution. But this paradigm requires the …
Metta as Method Acting, or Metta when I’m in the Mood?
I find it quite natural to practice Metta at times, but very difficult to make it a regular practice; though, maybe that’s exactly what I need? It seems with S. N. Goenka’s instruction, how to cultivate Metta vibrations is really up to me... One technique, to use thoughts or memories to trigger the Metta vibration, …
Continue reading Metta as Method Acting, or Metta when I’m in the Mood?
Serving on a ten day course
I have half packed my bag. I have ticked off my 'to do' list, leaving only this post to do before I set off on another Vipassana adventure, my first on Living Vipassana. Tomorrow I shall be serving at Dhamma Dipa, the main centre in the U.K, about four hours from where I live in London. …
Living Vipassana 