There we are, just minding our own business, sitting cross-legged upon our meditation cushion, when all of a sudden, out of the blue, we are accosted with painful memories of cruel acts, perpetrated against us, by slathering trolls. In a flash our zafu becomes a crossroad: do we indulge our controlling tendencies and fight the presence of a memory, or do we train in being laid back and seek to make peace with it? Lao Tzu and the Buddha agree, make peace with it. But that’s ea

Memories of events long forgotten surfacing during effective meditation are nothing new. But what of similar memories surfacing during our meditation breaks (the parts of the day between our formal meditation sessions)? Although there are several causes, today I’d like to focus on just one. Most of us were taught meditation wrong before we ever learned to do it right (assuming we were fortunate enough). We were taught to mind blank or we were taught to concentrate (which is t