They are settled by freedom from hatred.

This is the eternal law.

– Dhammapada 5

Another version:

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

This is a lovely Buddha from our family collection. It was purchased in Bali. I took the photograph.

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What do you pray for? Money? World peace? Your next soul mate? A clean, well-lighted place to live? Less CO₂ in the atmosphere? Please share.

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Gratitude, along with generosity, patience, and other qualities are natural developments from regular meditation practices.

Gratitude is a feeling of thanksgiving for something someone has done for you. It can also reflect your appreciation for a gift that someone has given you.

Spiritual gratitude takes this feeling one step further. You feel grateful to be alive on this planet in this century.

Of all the times and places in the universe, we are blessed with a planet that supports life as we know it.

We have beautiful trees, flowers, and animals to appreciate.

We have everything we need to be happy in the present moment.

We have clear streams of water to drink. We have shelter from the elements, and good food to eat.

We can celebrate life with our families and friends.

Gratitude Is A Meditation Practice

We can all learn to do the Gratitude Dance!

So what are you grateful for?

Please share what you are grateful for in your comments below!

You may also qualify for a free subscription to 9 Minute Meditation. Click on the link for details.

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I have already posted the video as Meditation Practices: How Do They Affect The Brain?

My purpose in this article is to extract one of the slides from the video and expand on it from the point of view of a meditation practitioner rather than a cognitive neuroscientist.

I think that there is a lot of value in doing this because the extracts present the concepts in very interesting ways.

Many Types of Mindfulness Meditation

Let’s look at this slide on Many Types of Meditation:

The Many Type of Mindfulness Meditation | Slide by Philippe Golden, Ph. D.

In this slide, we see three classes of meditation practices: concentration, analytic, and emptiness.

Concentration

Mindfulness of Breathing

The most basic practice, as taught by the Buddha and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, is mindfulness of breathing.

We are taught four basic practices of mindfulness of breathing:

• Recognizing the in breath as in breath and the out breath as out breath
• Following the in breath all the way in and following the out breath all the way out
• Being aware of the body as you breathe in and as you breathe out
• Calming the body as you breathe in and as you breathe out

Imagery and Visualization

Imagery and visualization have been a major part of my life for many years. Check out this article I Ching: Perseverance Furthers on BestMeditationVideos.com.

The part of the story that I did not tell at that time is that before I met Father Eli, I had taken the Silva Mind Control course. After about one month in the Ozark mountains with Father Eli, it dawned on me that he was teaching us to do the kind of training that I received from the Silva method. When I asked Father Eli about this, he told me that Jose Silva was one of his brightest students many years before me!

Mantra

As it turns out, I was given a very powerful mantra by Swami Rama of the Himalayas and continued to practice meditation with the mantra during the summer I trained in the Ozark mountains with Father Eli!

There, in the mountains, sitting in my yellow submarine (van), I had one of the most remarkable meditation experiences I’ve ever had. The memory of it inspires me, even today.

The most popular form of mantra meditation is probably Transcendental Meditation. You can read more about it in my article titled, Oprah Thinks Transcendental Meditation Practices are Amazing.

Contemplation

Where Dr. Philippe Goldin classified meditation types as, “Analytic-linguistic-reasoning,” I call these “contemplation.”

Contemplation is the process of using reasoning and analysis to look deeply into matters of importance in life.

Precious Human Birth

For example, Dr. Goldin uses “Precious human birth,” and I think this is an excellent one.

This one is especially nice to contemplate, starting from the big bang, to the origin of the galaxy, to the supernova that exploded in our neighborhood, to the forming of the solar system, to the cooling of planet earth to the point where it supports life, and down to the evolution of the human species.

Remember, we are all nothing but star dust, and in 5 billion years or more, even the sun will die.

I have talked a lot about the relationship between Cosmology and Buddhist Thought in my interview with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, elsewhere on this blog.

The Five Remembrances

Death meditation is one of the five remembrances talked about in The World Without Humans. The others include the contemplation of old age, sickness, impermanence, and karma.

Practicing the five remembrances, involves acknowledging that you will become ill, grow old, and eventually die, and realizing that there is no escape from any of these conditions.

Loving-kindness Meditation

Loving-kindness meditation is practiced quite widely in meditation circles and I’ve written about it in other posts on this blog.

It is one of the most important meditations that we can do to develop compassion for ourselves, or dear ones, and people all over who are suffering.

I have incorporated loving-kindness meditation into my daily practice for over twenty years now.

I learned some wonderful verses to use during loving-kindness meditation. Here is one set:

May I be at peace.
May my heart remain open.
May I know the beauty and the radiance of my own true nature.
May I be healthy.
May I be free and happy, truly happy.

After you have practiced showing loving-kindness blessings on yourself, and feel comfortable with doing so, the next step would be to substitute your loved ones for yourself in the above verses.

You could follow that with people in your extended family, people you know who are suffering, people you don’t even know, and finally, all sentient beings.

Emptiness

I have talked about emptiness in many places on this blog, so it is not necessary to deal with it at length in this post.

The insight of emptiness when we recognize that we are empty of a separate existence. We dependent on many causes and conditions that interact with our daily lives.

Just think about if for a moment. Where would you be without the sun, the rain, the soil, the gardener, the grocer, and your supply of water and food?

Even the sun has to inter-be with the galaxy and the cosmos.

What You Can Now Do

With all these meditation practices, I’m pretty sure you can find one that suits you fine.

On this website, you can start with the mindfulness of breathing recordings under “Mindfulness” tab (two slots to the right of “Home” tab). There you will find six guided 9 minute meditations, the Five Mindfulness Trainings and the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing. You can easily find these by clicking on the “Meditation Practices” tab below.

A better place to start may be with the Meditation tab next to the “Home” tab. Right now, there is a special so visit Get A Second Guided Meditation For Free.

Of course, you are not limited to these choices and you can choose to meditate on your own.

Whichever you choose, please share your experience with the community of meditation practitioners reading this blog and the Meditation Practices Facebook page.

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He teaches that the first noble truth is the fact of ill-being. Most authors render this truth as the fact of suffering.

Ill-being is a fact of life. We suffer when we are ill. We suffer when we get what we don’t want. We suffer when we get what we want.

So we must look into the cause of ill-being. This is the second noble truth.

The cause is our failure not to see things as they are right now in the present moment. We all have hopes, plans, wishes, and dreams. These instill desire and craving in our minds.

We overlook the fact that we have everything it takes to be happy in the present moment, as Thay teaches.

So well-being is the third noble truth. It says that we can eliminate much of our ill-being by having the right view on life.

Our job is to do what ever we can to minimize the extra suffering we cause ourselves by our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and consciousness. This can be done by living life just as it is and not how we demand it should be.

The fourth noble truth is the path to well-being and the end of ill-being.

The Buddha taught the eight-fold path or right view, right speech, right thought, right action, right livelihood, right  mindfulness, right concentration, and right insight.

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches the studying, practicing, and observing the Five Mindfulness Trainings provide a wonderful way to embody the path to well-being.

So what is the difference between ill-being and well-being? Look at the image to find out!

You see, Ill-being is a result of being focused on me, myself, and I!

Well-being has “we” in it and concern for our interbeing.

In your life, what do you do to minimize ill-being? What do you do to maximize well-being? Please share, especially if you like the animation.

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Meditation Practices for Healing and Well-Being

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- 3

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- Dhammapada 2

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Mind precedes its objects. They are mind-governed and mind-made. To speak or act with a peaceful mind, is to draw happiness after ones self, like an inseparable shadow.

- Dhammapada 2

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- Dhammapada 1

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