Background: Notes on an event in a 50+ year attempt to learn and benefit from spiritual practices…. For some years now, I have been trying various meditation techniques from many world traditions, particularly techniques which meditation teacher Shinzen Young has modified in various ways to make more sense to and be more doable by modern [...]
Continue reading about Experiences of Peace – or Was It Resting in the Nature of Mind?
Once in a while I stop to think about what my spiritual practices are and where they might be going. Not that my conceptions about it are anything final, but just as a guideline to myself, at the moment, and possibly of use to others. So on the Rigpa Fellowship retreat last week, I was [...]
At my San Diego Rigpa Fellowship retreat last week, lama Sogyal Rinpoche, in teaching about the nature of the unenlightened, ordinary mind (sem in Tibetan), mentioned how perception can be distorted, especially by strong emotions like anger. Naturally if you can’t perceive the world accurately, you’re going to do things that will have unintended and [...]
I wrote the following (do they still call it blank verse, or has poetry changed since I was in high school a zillion years ago?) while on a 10-day retreat last week with Sogyal Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama who wrote the best-selling Tibetan Book of Living and Dying a few years ago. My wife and [...]
Listening to some Buddhist teachings for dealing with emotions last night, and to fellow students’ understandings these teachings, I put together a number of things that struck me is saying something about levels of dealing with emotions. The first level, what we might call the level of not particularly dealing with an emotion, is the [...]
Continue reading about Dealing With Emotions: Levels of Practice in Buddhism and Gurdjieff Work
For many years I’ve been taking Buddhist teachings from Tibetan Lama Sogyal Rinpoche. I don’t call myself a “Buddhist,” or an any kind of “ist,” as I think about and try to practice various teachings from many paths and perspectives. I do find Buddhism appealing as it’s so psychological in its emphases, and Sogyal Rinpoche [...]
Continue reading about Enlightenment, Buddhism, Learning, Speculating
I’ve been having a discussion with some spiritual people working toward a “trans-traditional spirituality,” and we’ve been talking about miracles. Do they discourage even trying to develop a science, even a partial science, of spirituality, or can we fit them in somehow. Since one of my main scientific interests, parapsychology, is about “miracles,” this is [...]
Continue reading about Miracles, Science, and “My Religion is Truer than Yours!”
Dr. Charles Tart Mindfulness Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Lecture 5, Part 1 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here. CTT: Any kind of habit you can set up at the early learning stages of becoming more mindful is a good habit. Do watch for the point where [...]
Continue reading about Consciousness Dynamics, Living in Illusion
All of you know one of my main goals in life is to help genuine science and genuine spirituality interact in ways so each helps the other. An interesting aspect arose in discussion with colleagues recently, that I wrote my friend Shinzen Young, meditation teacher, about. Some of you might find this interesting, it’s about [...]
Continue reading about Sutta to the Kalamas: Mind Opening or Mind-Manipulating?
Dr. Charles Tart Mindfulness Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Lecture 4, Part 13 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here. Student: I was thinking about something. I guess it actually ties in all the stuff we’ve been talking about in states of being, and I have an interesting [...]