I am ever grateful for this practice, for learning to pull awareness back to the present moment and be with life as it is happening right now. When practicing on the cushion, sometimes I’ll disappear into a fantasy about what Read More
Author Archive | New York Insight Meditation Center
Happiness week 2
Having read the chapter on mindfulness in Real Happiness (finishing it on the bus) I was walking mindfully to catch another bus, one which was nowhere in sight and not likely to be arriving soon, when I decided to run Read More
Stretching it
I’m no stranger to pain. But who is? Yet sometimes I feel that three open heart surgeries ratchets it up a notch. That said, childbirth was no cake walk. And I have always imagined that for the child being born, Read More
Compassion or No [self] Compassion That is The Question. Beth D. Weinstein
I had the opportunity to attend a meditation with Alan Lokos (Community Meditation Center in NYC) this morning. His voice was so soothing and somehow he emanates compassion through his presence. A very close and lovely friend joined me. It Read More
This moment is a revelation
Those twenty minutes on the cushion are a sort of training camp. Returning awareness to the touch points, again and again and yes, yet again. Noting the sensation of the ribcage expanding along the side body on an inhale and Read More
Happiness, week one
I’ve meditated for a long time – but found the chapter on Concentration in Real Happiness revelatory -so simple and so deep, it knocked my socks off. For me right now, happiness is not being unkind. I’ve just turned 75. Read More
Concentrating – easy and hard
The very idea of concentration, this week as it applies to meditation and happiness, is both incredibly hard – as always – and oddly simple, in unexpected bursts. Upon the suggestion from Real Happiness I wrote my meditation schedule, for as Read More
The Space Between Us Dissolves Just A Little More Every Time I Sit in Meditation or, Thank You Robert.
I wondered what I could write about during the first week of the 28-day blogging experience and how to express my appreciation of the people, places, and things I have been exposed to because of my Vipassana practice. What could Read More
Again: Paris, Doubt, and Beginnings
I was out of the country (in Paris) for ten of these 28 days and managed to find the space and time to meditate (sometimes on planes!).
Caterpillars are born. Butterflies emerge.
Earlier this week, I visited the Butterfly Sanctuary at the Museum of Natural History.