1)      Yoga & Meditation:  Students who have done yoga have mentioned that it helps a great deal in meditation. 

2)      Ritual & Meditation:  Setting up a routine, such as having a cup of tea and burning some soothing incense can really help set up good conditions for the mind to have a better meditation.

3)      Ethics & Meditation:  Ethics is the first step on the 3-fold path.  Without a full realization of the ethics involved in meditation, it is difficult to understand why we meditate, and it is impossible to achieve the highest states of meditation (Dhyanas).  Arguably, most of us began meditation for personal reasons, to improve our own lives.  With an understanding of the ethics of meditation we will see that we can do this for all beings, and that the only way to truly benefit ourselves is to benefit all beings; this is the principle we all know as inter-relatedness.

4)      Sangha & Meditation:  What differences do you notice between meditating alone and meditating in a positively charged group?  I think most of us have had our best meditation experiences in a group of some sorts.

5)      Chanting:  What effects does chanting have on meditation?  As an individual it can bring a new part of the self into the meditation, the speech part.  This is said to have a strong effect on meditation, and also acts as a more powerful anchor for the mind.  In groups it can create quite a powerful energy, and it can seem as though the mantra chanted has a form or energy of it’s own. 

6)      Visualizations for all:  Bodhipaksa (our meditation teacher) was hesitant to include visualization practices, noting that they are very Buddhist, and may be difficult for those that hold other religious beliefs.  I think anybody, from the most devout Muslim or Christian to a beginning Buddhist can benefit from visualizations.  The key is who is being visualized.  For a Buddhist wishing to improve their compassion Avalokiteshvara would make a good choice.  For others it simply needs to be somebody in their lives who embodies a principle or way about them that the meditator wants to improve in there own lives.  It may be Jesus or Muhammad, or perhaps a grandparent or old friend.

My aim is to use each of these as a topic for a week’s meditation practices, along with other ideas that come in.  Hopefully we can have productive open discussions on each of them, detailing difficulties we may have, or remembering experiences we have had.

Please send any ideas to: Buddhism@MTFreethinkers.org