Viewing profile — xavoy

That article highlights the need for having a good teacher, and teaching meditation together with ethical guidelines. It also smells very much like someone has something to lose by…

I use the iPhone app called 'Soto Timer' when I'm away. It's free and allows you to configure multiple periods (so you can sit, rest or kinhin, sit, rest or kinhin etc) Sitting eve…

The ability to communicate as we humans do requires the ability to abstract, be removed from reality and ponder over it, so you can articulate your problems to others. The stories …

My pleasure :)

Indeed :) I do orientations for friends and occasionally newcomers to the Zendo. I tell them if they can honestly get past five in the first few months they are doing well :) Also,…

Unfortunately (I'm a kindle lover too!) the best books on Zen are either out of print completely or not available digitally :( Here's a couple of good lists thought: http://www.sfz…

Western Zen is very western/scientific/rational. Most of the teachers in the lineage I belong to are also psychologists, psychotherapists or counselors (but your teacher is NOT you…

Totally agree.

Not to dis BrainBot, but the only Zazen tracking tool you need is to sit Zazen every day. I can see how competition and seeing your hours tick over might be encouraging to some deg…

If you're aiming for enlightenment, you've missed the mark :)

Alan Watts is great, but he talks too much. It's interesting, and encouraging for those with an already established practice, but people who are new to meditation need to just sit.…

I'd say we're half evolved. We have this facility and don't know how to properly control it. It's a byproduct of some other facility (the ability to communicate).

Sit in a comfortable position, if possible on a cushion, on the floor, with three solid points of contact (your butt and your knees). Relax. Pay special attention to your shoulders…

Meditation isn't about tuning OUT, it's about tuning IN. Also, it's not 'suppressing' anything, it's just not paying the 'me' thoughts the attention you normally would.

Wow there is a lot of misinformation here, especially about Zen. If making beautiful things is encouraging attachment then I guess all of the Zen poets and painters weren't (and ar…

Everyone is bias. Even if you are an Atheist you are bias. You have a cultural bias, a sexual bias, etc etc. Your everyday experiences condition you to react to particular situatio…

I never said you should respect people's personal beliefs. I said you should respect people, irrespective of their beliefs, out of common decency. Simply for being another human be…

I _never_ stated that Dawkins and someone who circumcises unwilling females should be compared. I never said all fundamentalists are equal. I used the word fundamentalist liberally…

With compassion and respect. He is an evolutionary biologist, so he should make what he knows about evolutionary biology available. Tell people about it, write books, grant intervi…

The specifics of their views are irrelevant, at their core they are identical. They both believe they know best, and they both believe that it is in everyones best interest that th…

He is _right_ about evolution, there are no two ways about it and I never said otherwise. If someone tries to tell him that he is wrong about that, he has every right to put them s…

Earnest, educated, rational. Yes, these words might describe Dawkins, but well-meaning? I agree that indoctrination into a fundamentalist religion probably doesn't give a child the…

According to Wikipedia, Fundamentalism is the "strict adherence to specific theological doctrines". According to my dictionary, the definition of theological is "Of or relating to …

I'm not a Christian, Muslim or Jew. I don't believe in God. I find it slightly unnerving that there's still religious fundamentalists out there that flatly refuse to accept scienti…

To bypass this filter, Google SSH Tunneling. Overseas servers are cheap. This is the beginning of the end. I'm seriously considering moving overseas.