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Noble Eightfold Path

A Path of Diverse Practices

Overview of Buddhist Traditions

38 Objects of Meditation in Theravada Tradition

People can lose their lives in libraries.
They ought to be warned.
~ Saul Bellow

Buddhist Meditation: What & Why

Sitting Easy, Resting in Attention (posture)

Sitting in Awareness

Different Efforts in Practice

Video: Sitting Posture from StillSitting.com (also has good buckwheat cushions for sale)

If sitting is painful, take a look at Jeff Bickford’s exercises for flexibility and study Will Johnson’s book Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient

Make sure there is no wrangling
between the breath and the will.
~ A Book on Breath by Master
Great Nothing of Sung Shan

Awareness Through Breathing (Anapanasati)

Stability (Shamatha) and Clarity (Vipashyana)

Opening to the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

Awareness of Sensations & Sensations 2

Awareness of Feelings

Cycles of Reactivity and Attention

Reactivity and the Five Groups of Experience (skandhas)

12 Links of Dependent Arising

3 Marks

Knots

What do I know?
~ Montaigne

Because in the heart of darkness
I could not see, I began looking.
~ Hayden Carruth

Your vision will become clear
only when you look into your heart.
~ Carl Jung

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
~ Eden Phillpotts

What is this mind?
Who is hearing these sounds?
Do not mistake any state for
Self-realization, but continue
To ask yourself even more intensely,
What is it that hears?
|~ Bassui

Verses of kindness & compassion
(a.k.a. The Four Immeasurables or Brahma-Viharas)

Four Immeasurables one-page

A Prayer to Empty the Six Realms

May I be of help to others

Opening a Path to the Ocean

Shantideva’s Verses of Kindness & Compassion

Four Immeasurables from Unfettered Mind

Seven Points of Mind Training from Unfettered Mind

Longchenpa’s prayer of compassion

Forty one verses to cultivate awakenening mind

Sabbe satta sukhi hontu (May all beings be happy) audio

may all beings be safe, healthy, happy, and well,
at ease in their body, at home in the world

kindness : kinship

compassion : suffering with

comfort : strengthen

sympathy : feel together

A Sea of Benefactors

Motivation: First Things First

Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind

Ability and Willingness

Lineage of teachers

Bodhisattvas

 Poetry is news that stays news.
~ Ezra Pound

"Yogi, what time is it?"
someone asked.
Yogi Berra replied,
"You mean now?"

Worthy admonitions cannot fail to inspire us, but what matters is changing ourselves. Reverent advice cannot fail to encourage us, but what matters is acting on it. Encouraged without acting, inspired without changing -- there’s nothing to be done for such people.
~ Confucius 9:24

Mahamudra texts

Eight Strayings from Mahamudra

We are such stuff as dreams are made of...
~ The Tempest

Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Resources for Embodied Energy 

Moving in Awareness (one page)

Moving in Awareness: The Eight Pieces of Brocade

Eight Pieces on one page

18 Movements of Taiji Qigong (Shibashi)

Standing Like a Tree (Zhan Zhuang)

Movement Practices for Meditators by Jeff Bickford

Video: Eight Pieces of Brocade with George Draffan

Video: Tai Chi for Better Balance with George Draffan  

Video: Shibashi (18 movements) with George Draffan

 video of shibashi by Sjaak Terwindt

video of shibashi by Dan Stefan

Five Mindfulness Trainings (Five Precepts)

Notes on Gregory Kramer’s Insight Dialogue method

Practice group dynamics and structures

Four levels of structural dynamics in groups

Internal and external supports for structure and freedom

Organizational issues for practice groups

Guidance on Finding a Buddhist Teacher or Organization

Purpose of Regular Meetings by Idries Shah

Twenty Essential Rules for the Zen Community
by Baizhang

Three Ways of Looking at Paying for Spiritual Teachings
by Franca Leeson

Seven Languages for Transformation
by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

Nonviolent communication

Family Dharma Resources

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
~ T. S. Eliot

The end of all meeting is parting.
The end of all accumulation is dispersal.
The end of all building is ruin.
The end of all living is dying.

Buddhist List of Lists

The Sutras

Reading list corresponding to Wake Up To Your Life by Ken McLeod

Buddhist books by Northwest authors

Buddhist websites

When you study, study everything under the sun. When you reflect, keep an open mind. When you practice, do one practice and go deep.

~ Jamgön Kongtrul, 1813-1899

There is a tame, and also a wild, side to the human mind. The tame side, like a farmer's field, has been disciplined and cultivated to produce a desired yield. It is useful but limited. The wild side is larger, deeper, more complex, and though it cannot be fully known, it can be explored... It has landscapes and creatures within it that will surprise us. It can refresh us and scare us. Wild mind reflects the larger truth of our ancient selves, of our ancient animal and spiritual selves... The wildness gives heart, courage, love, spirit, danger, compassion, skill, fierceness, and sweetness -- all at once --

~ Gary Snyder, Writers and
the War Against Nature

The wind whistles in the bamboo and the bamboo dances.
When the wind stops the bamboo grows still.
A silver bird flies over the autumn lake.
When it has passed, the lake’s surface does not try
to hold onto the image of the bird.

~ Dhyana master Huong Hai (1627-1715)
translated by Thich Nhat Hanh

Gotami, the qualities of which you may know,
"These qualities lead to passion, not to dispassion;
to being fettered, not to being unfettered;
to accumulating, not to shedding;
to self-aggrandizement, not to modesty;
to discontent, not to contentment;
to entanglement, not to seclusion;
to laziness, not to aroused persistence;
to being burdensome, not to being unburdensome":
You may definitely hold,
"This is not the Dhamma, this is not the Vinaya,
this is not the Teacher’s instruction."

~ Gotami Sutta (AN 8.53)

Cutting Through by Machik Lapdrön

An utter mystery — it can't be named.

Supple and free — all sense of "I" is gone.

Totally transparent — emotional reactions cannot take hold.

Radiantly clear — knowing, free from any fixation, inside or out.

Vividly present — direct awareness, not attaching to anything.

Translated by Ken McLeod