Weezer: Distraction Subtraction

"It's funny, I was just talking to the president of our record company, and he was concerned that our younger fans were going to be freaked out because I was meditating or whatever," he laughs. "Like, they might think I'm some kind of hippie or something. But honestly, it's all perfectly normal. People think I'm a freak or something, but I'm actually a really normal guy."

Read more: http://www.mtv.com/bands/w/weezer/news_feature_091905/

Just Say "Ommmmm . . . "

A local experiment suggests teaching prison inmates meditation could be an effective form of rehab, among other benefits.


It was called the North Rehabilitation Facility, a nice name for jail. The 300-bed unit of King County's correctional system in Shoreline was rated minimum security, but there was nothing minimal about the problems that brought its inmates there. Most were serious substance abusers as well as convicted criminals, with discouraging rates of recidivism.

Read more : http://www.seattleweekly.com/2005-08-17/news/just-say-ommmmm-nbsp-nbsp-nbsp-nbsp-nbsp/

Spotlight: A Life Sentence

The film tells the story of Kiran Bedi, the woman who took over as inspector general of India’s prisons in 1993, determined to change how things were done.

The previous jailers saw administering punishment as their job: the worse the punishment, the less likely inmates would return. Bedi saw this as the problem: giving inmates a steady diet of punishment without rehabilitation did not prepare them to live in society. She was right; most inmates ended up returning again and again.

Read more : http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-7-6/30016.html

Confessions of a tourist: I bent over backwards for her

There are lots of good reasons to go on a meditation retreat in India, but stalking your ex, I discover, isn’t one of them.

Read more : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/article534744.ece

'Vipassana' doc showcases the power of meditative insight

What could possibly make hardened criminals locked up in one of the worst prisons on earth say that they are actually glad to be there? What powerful force could drive violent offenders to weep joyfully and unabashedly?

Read more: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/05.25.05/vipassana-0521.html

Connections on and off the course

"Emotional balance and inner peace are extraordinarily useful assets in a normal day at the office. ..... Vipassana is by far the best training I have ever had in management and leadership." says a business warrior.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/Connections-on-and-off-the-course/2005/04/25/1114281505152.html?oneclick=true

Pure Attention

You refer to vipassana as a pure science. Why so?
For me, Buddha was a great scientist. He discovered something which was lost, which people had forgotten. In science, there is no blind faith, no blind belief. You experiment with things. If many people experiment and get the same result, they accept it. Moreover, Buddha kept on saying, "Buddha or no Buddha, the law of nature, dhamma, prevails always." The law remains the same. If you generate anger, you are bound to become miserable. If you generate peace, love and compassion, you are bound to have peace and harmony. This law was always there, before Buddha and after Buddha.

Could you explain the vipassana technique that you teach, because it seems that it's taught differently in various cultures and traditions?
Before I give an explanation of what I am teaching, one point should be clear: I am not here to condemn any technique or to compare or contrast whatever technique people teach in the name of vipassana. I teach only what I got from the tradition.

The whole technique is investigating reality at the experiential level, within oneself. In this technique, it is very important that people stay at a congenial place where they can meditate with the least amount of disturbance. If one is connected with outside objects, one cannot go to the depth of the mind.
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Read more: http://archive.thebuddhadharma.com/issues/2003/spring/goenka_pure_attention.html

WHY I’M NOT A CATHOLIC — Globe and Mail — July 20, 2002

Wandering around India in the early 1970s, I was amused rather than swayed by the gurus who were attracting hordes of Western seekers by means of abstract philosophies, physical distortions, magic tricks, sexual licence, or ganja. But then I happened upon S. N. Goenka. Clean-cut, clean-shaven, clean-living, he certainly didn’t look or act like any other baba. In fact, he had been a prominent businessman and a leader of the traditional Hindu community in Rangoon before he discovered the ancient technique he now taught. It cured him of severe migraines — something none of the medical specialists he had consulted in Switzerland or the United States were able to do — and in 1969 he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to teaching it beyond the borders of Burma, where it had been passed down like a closely guarded secret for more than 2,500 years.

Step by step, for ten days, he taught me how to meditate, and

every evening he gave a lecture on why it worked. There was nothing complicated or occult about it: no doctrinal texts to study or esoteric languages to learn, no mantras or visualizations, no prayers or prostrations, no icons or joss sticks. God and the afterlife weren’t denied so much as set aside, as were reincarnation and nirvana too, and nothing was to be accepted until it had been experienced. Ethical behaviour wasn’t a matter of Mr. Goenka’s laying down the law with promises of heaven or threats of hell; it was reduced to the fact that hurting others by word, thought, or action inevitably boomerangs back upon oneself as some form of misery. Most of all, I responded to the logic that no god, priest, swami, or saint — least of all, Mr. Goenka himself — could redeem me from the consequences of my own deeds.

Read more: http://web.archive.org/web/20061015235142/http://rongrahamcanada.com/article/catholic.html

Meditation holds silent promise for prisoners

Several men in bright-orange outfits sink into fluffy cushions for daily meditation. They remove their shoes, close their eyes, slow their breathing to a languorous pace.

The room is still and serene on this recent afternoon as they head down Buddha's Eight-Fold Path toward the Four Noble Truths -- until the material world crashes in.

"Attention all residents!" crackles a loudspeaker. "Report back to your dorms! In-room head count!"

Inhale, exhale. Such is enlightenment, jailhouse-style.

Here, at the Northern Rehabilitation Facility, a minimum-security jail in Shoreline, Buddhist meditation -- and its quest for freedom from suffering -- is seemingly at odds with incarceration.


Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Meditation-holds-silent-promise-for-prisoners-1062411.php

Prisoners benefit from meditation

Vipassana has been tried on an experimental basis in Lancaster prison in the UK. The research was presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists annual conference in London.


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1430311.stm

Ten Days of Silence: Inside a Vipassana Retreat

Nandini Naik, 21, is a religious studies major at Colby College, Maine. Her spiritual quest has led her to Zen meditation, Reiki, and most recently, a 10-day Vipassana retreat in her native India. In a recent interview, she described what it was like to spend over a week in silent meditation and self-observation.

Read more : http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Hinduism/2001/01/Ten-Days-Of-Silence-Inside-A-Vipassana-Retreat.aspx

Superscience : An interview with S. N. Goenka

S. N. Goenka came to New York this fall for the Millennium World Peace Summit at the United Nations. He was interviewed there by Helen Tworkov.

What happens during a ten-day Vipassana course?

The whole process is one of total realization, the process of self-realization, truth pertaining to oneself, by oneself, within oneself. It is not an intellectual game. It is not an emotional or devotional game: “Oh, Buddha said such and such . . . so wonderful . . . I must accept.” It is pure science. I must understand what’s happening within me, what’s the truth within me. We start with breath. It looks like a physical concept, the breath moving in and moving out. It is true. But on the deeper level the breath is strongly connected to mind, to mental impurities. While we’re meditating, and we’re observing the breath, the mind starts wandering—some memory of the past, some thoughts of the future—immediately what we notice is that the breath has lost its normality: it might be slightly hard, slightly fast. And as soon as that impurity is gone away it is normal again. That means the breath is strongly connected to the mind, and not only mind but mental impurities. So we are here to experiment, to explore what is happening within us. At a deeper level, one finds that mind is affecting the body at the sensation level.

This causes another big discovery—that you are not reacting to an outside object. Say I hear a sound and I find that it is some kind of praise for me; or I find someone abusing me, I get angry. You are reacting to the words at the apparent level, yes, true. You are reacting. But Buddha says you are actually reacting to the sensations, body sensations. That when you feel body sensation and you are ignorant, then you keep on defiling your mind by craving or by aversion, by greed or by hatred or anger. Because you don’t know what’s happening.

 Read more : http://www.tricycle.com/interview/superscience