MEDITATE like a JEDI

Lama Jigme Gyatso

Mar 19
2 min

Demystifying Zen 19mar23

Let us wrest zazen from the grasp of the elitist and the superstitious. Our warm up is the Heart Sutra and our cool down is the recitation of the Four Immeasurables. They could be either chanted or merely read aloud. And if you do not possess a translation you enjoy, reach out to me (in chat) and I’ll be delighted to gift you a PDF. The seventh and eighth folds of the Buddha’s path of liberation are mindfulness and meditation. Which, as it turns out, is in harmony with evolut

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Mar 13
2 min

Open Eyed Meditation 13mar23

Perhaps you are like me, and also were raised where contemplatives in magazines, movies, and art work were depicted as sitting with their eyes closed, face upturned towards the heavens, and so utterly blissed out that they had become utterly oblivious to the world around them. But what has that to do with empathy? I am reminded of an episode of the Colbert Report, where the host peered into the camera and announced that world hunger must have ended because he just ate lunch.

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Observation: Repression or Meditation 8mar23

Lama Jigme Gyatso

Mar 8
2 min

Observation: Repression or Meditation 8mar23

Repressing our thoughts, memories, and feelings during meditation is never a good thing. It is easy to do. And we don’t even have to do it on purpose. Any form of repression is an indulgence or our rigid and controlling tendencies. Yes, sometimes we might choose to repress something because we plain don’t like it. Other times we can repress accidentally, in our sincere enthusiasm to merely do a good job. Labeling is an excellent example of that. A deep examination of our labe

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Mar 7
2 min

Mechanics of Mindfulness 7mar23

I love Kung Fu Hustle, have you seen it? In the final reel of the film the protagonist has found his inner martial arts master and as such, he does not focus directly upon his would-be assailants. Instead he seems to gaze around them, across them, through them. For, in so doing, he shed the limits of foveal vision, concentration, as well as rigidity and instead accessed peripheral vison, mindfulness, flexibility, spontaneity, and flow; elegantly whooping ass. But what has thi

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Ego-death, Mindfulness, and Meditation (1mar23)

Lama Jigme Gyatso

Mar 1
2 min

Ego-death, Mindfulness, and Meditation (1mar23)

“Ego-death” is a popular term in the literature extoling the benefits of DMT, but what does it mean? Like many compound metaphors it is vague, ungainly, imprecise, and generates more confusion then it dispels. Both the Sutta on the Failings of the World and contemporary neuroscience agree that all primates have evolved to DREAD: scarcity, pain, scorn, and anonymity as well as DESIRE: abundance, pleasure, praise, and fame. Although this set of primal drives aids the physical p

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Concentration, Distraction, and Mindfulness - 11feb23

Lama Jigme Gyatso

Feb 11
1 min

Concentration, Distraction, and Mindfulness - 11feb23

Let’s contrast concentration with mindfulness. Numerous authors have recorded their misadventures, squandering months in earnest concentration (rigid and controlling) where, even in the bowels of a cave, the silence never felt perfect enough, nor the peace transformative enough. Mindfulness (flexible and laid back) is the opposite, for even when practiced, even in a busy intersection, every perception, emotion, and memory serves only to fuel the process; deepening its tranqui

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Concentration, Suppression, and Mindfulness - 4feb23

Lama Jigme Gyatso

Feb 4
1 min

Concentration, Suppression, and Mindfulness - 4feb23

Every thought suppressed is an opportunity for insight, lost! But how do contemplatives find themselves in this predicament? Misinformation! Too many authors or teachers are confusing mindfulness with concentration (rigid, anxious, and controlling). If concentration is off the table, then how are we to reconcile mindfulness and respiration? When we practice mindfulness during each enthusiastic inhalation (with the training slogan “Notice this…”) and meditation during each rel

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Mindfulness and Meditation Clarified - 31jan23

Lama Jigme Gyatso

Jan 31
1 min

Mindfulness and Meditation Clarified - 31jan23

Pseudo-spiritual hacks mercilessly juggle the terms mindfulness and meditation confusing everyone. Neuroscience could offer some great rules of thumb with which to tell them apart. We could train in MINDFULNESS with every inhalation, for that is what accesses the Sympathetic nervous system, ensconced within our thoracic spinal cord. It is wired for sensory acuity; allowing us to perceive sensations, flavors, scents, sounds, sights as well as our emotions, intentions, reason,

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Jan 20
1 min

Meditation and Gilded Cages - 20jan23

Obsessive compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder could be torture. So it is utterly understandable that those who suffer from them would seek a break from their symptoms. Sometimes they are taught a false bill of goods, hearing that “mindfulness” could give them that respite. Sadly that type of (hitting-the-metaphoric) pause button is the opposite of mindfulness, and once they stand up from their meditation cushion the symptoms (repressed or ignored) come rushin

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Jan 18
1 min

Mindfulness, Neuroscience, Meditation

The Buddha dropped a hint in the Anapanasati Sutta first with the phrase, “…true knowledge and liberation…” and then with “…coalescence and tranquility…”. During my second three-year retreat Lama: Chodrak Gyatso taught me that relaxation was the key to meditation. Later Bhakha Tulku and then Bhante Vimalaramsi repeated these pointing out instructions. But what has that to do with neuroscience? Our thoracic spinal cord is the seat of our sympathetic nervous system. Evolutionar

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Mindfulness, Impermanence, and Meditation - 17jan23

Lama Jigme Gyatso

Jan 17
1 min

Mindfulness, Impermanence, and Meditation - 17jan23

In junior high my companions would regale each other with tales of Bruce Lee. Each story a more fanciful departure from the truth. The same thing occurs concerning the Buddha: tales of bliss and attainment each straying further from what he taught. Beware of those who speak fondly of the bliss of permanent mindfulness for mindfulness that is oblivious to pain is NOT mindful. In the teachings of both Sutra and Tantra we are told of the evanescent nature of mindfulness. Contemp

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Dec 19, 2022
2 min

Fear and Meditation - 19dec22

Fear saved our ancestor’s lives many times over. But in our world (safe and sanitized) it often does more harm than good. After a lifetime squandered fleeing our fears of perils (accurate or distorted) we could have a moment of clarity: weary of our running and perhaps no longer certain of that from which have fled. What would the Buddha advise? Terrors could be like splinters. It is often far more harmful to dig after them with needle, tweezers, or blade than to simply allow

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Dec 14, 2022
2 min

Mindfulness or Emptiness?

Some Zen students are advised to simply watch their thoughts while others are admonished “there is NO thinker of the thoughts.” Well, which is it? Ask the first century Buddhist philosopher, Nargarjuna. He advised that we need to contemplate BOTH conventional AND ultimate realities if we are to ascend to Nirvana (just a bird requires BOTH their wings if they are to take to the skies). But how are we to do that? Due to a happy coincidence of evolutionary biology our sympatheti

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Dec 7, 2022
1 min

The Metronome of Breath - 7dec22

Breathing could be quite like a metronome; especially when it unfolds naturally and spontaneously. Due to one of evolution’s happy coincidences EVERY inhalation automatically accesses our sympathetic nervous system, supporting our sensory acuity and allowing us to notice: vulnerably, passively, viscerally, and randomly. During each IN-breath we could effortlessly notice sensation, flavor, scent, sound, sight, and the like as well as observe emotion, intention, thought, memory

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Nov 20, 2022
1 min

The Myth of the Monkey Mind - 20nov22

Elitist meditation teachers (not all of them villains, most of them fools) have convinced the unwashed masses that meditation consists of either mind-blanking, or unwavering concentration and that if anything else happens then we are a failure and have wasted time. They tell us unlikely stories, convincing us that we have a, so called, “Monkey Mind” screaming as it jumps from branch to conceptual branch in the jungle canopy of our brain. And the sincere and tender-hearted who

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Sep 8, 2022
2 min

Love of Silence

The merciless sun beat down upon the solitary retreat center. To the teacher’s delight an anemic breeze drifted in through the cinderblock window. It played lackadaisically upon the loose blade of a defunct fan. And as the fan, that had clearly seen better days, began to turn in the feeble breeze, its rusted shaft turned noisily upon its workings. The American students, as if in baroque counter point, began to complain, and whine, and kvetch (for truly that is the song of my

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Lama Jigme Gyatso

Aug 11, 2022
2 min

Running Meditation

There are brave men and women who put themselves in harm’s way, so we don’t have to. And many of these military folk must run on a daily basis. But unless we’re being chased by a monster (from a child’s nightmare) jogging could get quite boring. Could there be a way to bring running into the Buddha’s path of mindfulness and meditation? As we inhale we could silently and mentally recite “Notice this…” and as we exhale we could silently and mentally recite “…relaxing!” With eac

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MEDITATE like a JEDI​

MEDITATE like a JEDI​

MEDITATE like a JEDI

MEDITATE like a JEDI