An interview with Insight Dialogue author and teacher Gregory Kramer

New Zealand is blessed next month with the arrival of Gregory Kramer, an American practitioner and teacher of Insight Meditation.
Gregory is also the co-founder and director of the Metta Foundation, Portland, Oregon, a center of Buddhist practice in the Insight Meditation tradition. He has developed a practice that takes meditation off the mat and into [...]

An interview with India-based meditation teacher Tarun Kumar

Meditation. Why is everyone getting so excited about it?
Could be because it works – on many different levels.
In March & April of this year New Zealanders will have a chance to find out why meditation is so powerful from India-based meditation expert Tarun Kumar.
Back by popular demand, Tarun is touring the country for the [...]

Being still for a change – why meditating is a response to climate change

by guest author Christine Dann, writer, researcher, teacher and Green activist
October 24, 2009 is a day with a difference, one that will go down in history as the first international day of grass roots action on climate change.
Hopefully it will be the last such day, because the world leaders meeting at the December climate [...]

Part 4: Completion of the loving-kindness sadhana, Day 30 to Day 40

This was the easiest sadhana (daily spiritual practice) I’ve done. Simply sitting cross-legged and repeating four lines (in English no less!) over and over.
May I be filled with loving-kindness
May I be well
My I be peaceful and at ease
May I be happy
I finished yesterday, with a twenty minute meditation. Yet this morning, getting stuck into work, [...]

Part 3: Inside the experience of meditation – Loving-Kindness sadhana to day 29

Meditation is a cumulative experience.

That is, the more you do it, the more you get it, the more you want to do it, the more you get out of it… creating this constant feedback loop of encouragement.

Unfortunately, it also works the other way. We begin to meditate, never having done it before, likely with many expectations of what meditation is “supposed” to be like.

Part 2: Inside the experience of meditation – loving-kindness sadhana to Day 20

This practice was inspired by many things.
A conversation with friends after a heart-opening Bhakti practice about the nature of the spiritual path.
An understanding that opening the body was all very well, but unless the heart also opened, essentially meaningless.
A desire to experience more equinimity, more joy, more bliss, more love.
And a book called A Path [...]

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