Since the first talk to my high school classes titled Are We Living Loving Lives? was well received, I gave a second talk that linked meditation to a life centered on truth and love. You can see the presentation slides here if you're interested. I now have around 60 high school juniors choosing to meditate for …
Category: Personal Experiences
These books gave me insights to sign up for a 10-day Vipassana meditation
Solid evidences from neuroscience support that meditation not only reduces stress, but also changes the brain; i.e. meditators had more gray matter in the frontal cortex, which is associated with working memory and executive decision-making. According to Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School who studied mediation, 8-week of 40 minutes of daily mediation practice …
Continue reading These books gave me insights to sign up for a 10-day Vipassana meditation
Re-establishing my daily practice
I am now several weeks into re-establishing my consistent practice of meditating 2 hours a day. Mostly, this was a personal decision motivated by my desire to re-center myself in Dhamma, but there is a bit of added motivation in the form of guidelines that old students accepted to sit a Satipatthana Sutta course should …
My Humble Authentic Voice
Goenka's stories and discourses are so good that for years I found myself using his language and sharing his stories in casual conversation as if they were my own. Vipassana was so novel and different from anything I had ever experienced that I hadn't developed the necessary language to articulate my personal thoughts and feelings …
Away with snarkiness
I’ve been thinking about a comment on a blog I came across recently (okay, it's Rivers Cuomo's website...see my last post, lol :). Anyway, the comment was in response to a post by Cuomo about the benefits of Vipassana meditation in his life. Inexplicably, the commenter felt the need to suggest his own meditation practice …
A Missed Opportunity?
As the mindfulness movement grows, I wonder if the Goenka organization is missing an opportunity to lead. While focusing on preserving Goenka's teachings and enforcing the 2 hour a day minimum, teachers from other traditions have shown that as little as 3, 5, or 10 minutes of meditation a day can make a positive change …
Weezer
I found myself Googling Rivers Cuomo, the Weezer guitarist, last night after a friend recently mentioned that he is a serious Goenka Vipassana meditator. I knew that at one point, but had forgotten. Let me just say that after visiting his personal website, I am extremely humbled and inspired by him as a meditator. The …
Love and Truth in My High School Classroom
With mass shootings and teen suicide on the rise, there is a need to discuss what is important in life, and what is not. Most of us are running around trying to accomplish short term goals not realizing that our efforts are leading us towards an undesirable destination harming ourselves and others along the way. …
Purpose in Life
I’m at a juncture in my life, re-evaluating my career direction. At a deeper level, I am really re-examining the question what is my fundamental purpose in life? The instinctive rote answer, the one I long ago arrived at, is that my life is about “being the most loving person I can be.” But what …
People Can Change
Vipassana has a special message to share with the world; People can change. Youthful optimism transforms into frustration, stubbornness, and pessimism with age as individuals repeatedly run into the same barriers in their efforts to make the world a better place. The expectation that everyone is acting according to their own volition has created the …
Living Vipassana 