I've been delving deeply of late into what seems like a bottomless well of Buddhist insight on the nature of our mind. Much of this I give full credit to a wonderful clinical psychologist, which happens to be a former Buddhist monk, by the name of Jack Kornfield. Google his name. You'll find plenty there to fill in any biographical itch you may have. You can find plenty of his books online and one in particular that I would highly recommend is his "Meditation for Beginners." It comes with a CD that has six or so guided meditations. I think the beautiful thing about Buddhism is that it lays no claim to any particular creed and you can still be an atheist, agnostic, Christian, etc. and access the wisdom of this philosophy without the pressures of converting to Buddhism. The more I think about the incessant cacophany of our society and its multicolored marketers the more I am convinced that the bravest souls on our planet are those who have the courage to sit quietly and address the impact of our distorted perspectives as they dance their way across our minds while we try to breath and pause to address the many visitors we have while meditating. It will bring you to tears. It will surprise you. It will convince you how active your mind is. It will unveil all your story lines and what is behind each of them. Recently while meditating I envisioned myself on the shore of a beach, just sitting on the sand and watching the waves come in. The tide slowly increased in my unfolding thoughts and the waves graduated to crashed of water. At one point I was submerged in water and as I recall I threw my hands up into the air, stood up, walked to another part of the shore, smiled, sat back down and continued to sit. In a lot of ways what I just described encapsulates the essence of sitting meditation. We are not there to fight with our thoughts but to simply acknowledge them, label them as such "fear" or "bitterness" or "desire", etc. and to simply move on. In time we begin to see that our experiences are very similar to what others suffer from and we see how interrelated we are to one another on this place we call earth.
