Bodhipaksa's Blog, page 24
November 7, 2013
Why free Bodhi?
Earlier this year I got on a roll. We’d had a 100 Day Meditation Challenge, during which I managed to write blog posts for 35 days before having to drop down to posting every five days because I just had too much to do. Then we had our 100 Days of Lovingkindness, and somehow — mainly by having no more than 5 ½ hours of sleep a night, I managed to post every day. And some of those posts were recordings of guided meditations. I did it, but it was tough.
The 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts are still there, available as a resource. In fact I know some people are working through that series of posts together.
I’d like to do more of that kind of thing, but right now my time gets taken up by tasks that aren’t about writing and teaching. I spend a lot of time doing website maintenance, answering the phone, filing taxes, photographing things we’re going to sell on our store (that’s one way we fund Wildmind), Photoshopping those images, doing publicity, upgrading computer software, doing graphic design, handling student registrations for our online courses, etc. It actually amazes me that I manage to write anything. Some weeks I don’t.
My creative productivity is grinding to a halt. The problem is that organizations need organizing, and right now I’m the only person who can do that. Apart from me there’s one person who works part-time taking care of our online store, a bookkeeper who comes in twice a month, and Linda up in Toronto taking care of the news posts in our blog. I do everything else.
Next year we’d like to run a year-long program of meditation challenges and special events, like our 100 Days of Lovingkindness. I think it’s going to be a brilliant program. We’ll be posting information about these activities soon. But to produce all the material for these projects I need to be free of all this admin I’ve been doing.
I need a business manager.
And we’ve found the perfect guy — a former engineer called Mark, who has already done a few days of work with me. It’s been fantastic working with Mark. He’s really helping next years’ program to come together. He’s helping with publicity. He’s starting to take a whole bunch of tasks off of my to-do list.
But the trouble is we can’t afford to employ Mark for more than a few hours a week at the moment.
So what we’re trying to do is to raise $22,000, to cover the first six months of Mark’s wages, along with associated costs such as employers’ Social Security and Medicare.
Once Mark’s up and running full time, he’ll free me up so that I can not only write more materials that can be freely available, like the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts, but he’ll also free me up to record more CDs and to turn more of my writing into books. And those kinds of things will bring in more income for Wildmind, so that we can cover Mark’s wage costs in the longer-term. So it all will be sustainable. We just need the seed money to get started.
I really need this in order to be effective as a teacher. And so I’m asking that you contribute to our Free Bodhi Fund. Now I know, there are many things you could contribute to. But not only will you be benefiting the hundreds of thousands of people who come to this site for spiritual guidance and nourishment, but you’ll be benefiting yourself quite directly, because we’re offering some great perks to our donors.
Please do check out our Indiegogo project, and help set me free to teach and write.
Related posts:
Free Bodhi!
Free Bodhi! And benefit innumerable beings, including yourself
The Free Bodhi Fund
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November 6, 2013
The Urban Retreat on Wildmind (Nov 9–16)
Join Wildmind in the 2013 Urban Retreat
You are invited to join an urban retreat we will be hosting from Saturday 9th to Saturday 16th November. The “urban retreat” is a week of online talks, teac
Related posts:
Join the Urban Retreat, Nov 9–16
A new online Wildmind community
“The Heart of Awakening”: a retreat with Bodhipaksa, Florida, Feb 22 to 24
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What a weird thing
"I bought a mini-oven from Aldi today and inside the box was an Instruction Manual for a Microwave oven inside which was an envelope and old family photographs that appear to belong to your family. Please contact me if you think they belong to you."
I thought for a moment that this was some kind of spam or scam, but I think it's genuine. For one thing, the name and email address matched, and for another I've often heard family members in the UK talk about shopping at Aldi. I can only imagine that someone had returned the oven and that the photographs ended up in it accidentally. I've replied, and I'm hoping to have more information soon.
Related posts:
My top five email pet peeves
And soon we will be four
back online in Addis
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Free Bodhi! And benefit innumerable beings, including yourself
On Monday we launched a major crowdfunding effort here at Wildmind.
Wildmind’s aim is to transform society by promoting mindfulness and compassion. We do this by teaching Buddhist meditation.
What we do
We do a lot. More than 1.5 million people visit our site each year. Our most popular web page (not counting the home page) has been read by half a million people. Our most popular blog post has been read more than a quarter of a million times. Hundreds of thousands of people have learned to meditate here — for free. We also publish guided meditation CDs, which help fund our activities, and those have reached hundreds of thousands of people as well.
And mostly it’s been me, Bodhipaksa (aka “Bodhi,” and sometimes aka “Mr. B”) running the show. I have a part-time office worker, Shantikirika, who deals with our online store. And a volunteer in Canada (Linda Robertson) helps with the blog. Apart from that, it’s all me.
Why we need to free Bodhi
Because we have such a small team, I end up spending a lot of my time doing admin of various kinds, from publicizing events to maintaining our social media presence, to photographing products that we sell in our store. And I also write blog posts, run free guided meditation sessions in Google Plus Hangouts (which you can see on my Youtube channel), correspond with people who write to me asking for advice about meditation, and run the Wildmind Community on Google Plus.
The admin really gets in the way of the teaching work I do, and so I need more help in the office. Actually, I need someone to run the office, so that I can concentrate on writing and teaching. That’s why we’re fundraising.
I have seen the future, and his name is Mark
We’ve found the perfect person to be Wildmind’s business manager. He’s smart, detail-oriented, a great planner, and a man with a big heart and a passion for helping people. His name is Mark Tillotson.
It’s our aim to raise $22,000 so that we can pay Mark to work here for six months, during which time he’ll free me up to teach. Following on from our 100 Day Meditation Challenge and our 100 Days of Lovingkindness from earlier this year, Mark has already helped me to develop a stunning program of activities for 2014, which we’ll be announcing shortly.
What about after that six month period? The $22,000 is seed money. Seeds grow. And Mark’s presence here will help free me up so that I can bring out more CDs and write books — the kinds of things that have been the core of Wildmind’s support since we started.
You can support our Free Bodhi Fund by visiting our project page at Indiegogo.
What’s in it for you?
Apart from the good karma and the warm glow of supporting an organization that does a lot of good in the world, we’re offering you perks for supporting us. You can give whatever you like; we have perks for all levels of donations:
$5 donation: We’ll send you a $5 coupon for our store, which you can use to download guided meditation MP3s. What a deal!
$15 donation: We’ll send you a $15 coupon for our store, which you can use to download guided meditation MP3s.
$50 donation: You’ll receive a set of six guided meditation CDs by Bodhipaksa: Guided Meditations, Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction, Guided Meditations for Busy People, The Heart’s Wisdom, Sacred Sound, Mindfulness Meditations for Teens. (We’ll even pay the shipping.)
$108 donation: You’ll participate in a four-week online meditation course led by Bodhipaksa, which includes guided meditation MP3s. (Normally this costs $120.)
$250 donation: You’ll become a member of Wildmind’s Life Member Program, which gives you access to the course materials from eight online meditation courses, which include readings and guided meditation MP3s. You can also choose one of Bodhipaksa’s guided meditation CDs.
$500 donation: As well as access to our Life Member Program you’ll also receive two hours of one-on-one meditation coaching from Bodhipaksa, either on Skype on in a Google+ Hangout.
We do hope you’ll support us, both by becoming a donor and by sharing our project with your friends and social media contacts. This is the most important thing we’ve ever done at Wildmind. It’s really going to free me up so that I can teach more. And that’s going to help not only you, but hundreds of thousands — even millions — of other people.
You can give at our Indiegogo project page.
Related posts:
Free Bodhi!
The Free Bodhi Fund
Free meditation cassettes for inmates
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November 4, 2013
The Free Bodhi Fund
I'm desperately in need of help in the office so that I can throw off the shackles of administration and be freed up to focus on teaching meditation and writing (most of which will end up on Wildmind's blog). So we have a brand-new Indiegogo project that will provide seed money for a new business manager to take most of the admin off my hands.
We have some great perks! Please check out our project page on Indiegogo: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-free-bodhi-fund/x/3666313
Related posts:
Free Bodhi!
Free Bibles!
The Glass Buddha Project: Technology + Mindfulness = Awesome
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Free Bodhi!
Today we’re starting a major crowdfunding effort here at Wildmind.
Wildmind’s aim is to transform society by promoting mindfulness and compassion. We do this by teaching Buddhist meditation.
What we do
We do a lot. More than 1.5 million people visit our site each year. Our most popular web page (not counting the home page) has been read by half a million people. Our most popular blog post has been read more than a quarter of a million times. Hundreds of thousands of people have learned to meditate here — for free. We also publish guided meditation CDs, which help fund our activities, and those have reached hundreds of thousands of people as well.
And mostly it’s been me, Bodhipaksa (aka “Bodhi,” and sometimes aka “Mr. B”) running the show. I have a part-time office worker, Shantikirika, who deals with our online store. And a volunteer in Canada (Linda Robertson) helps with the blog. Apart from that, it’s all me.
Why we need to free Bodhi
Because we have such a small team, I end up spending a lot of my time doing admin of various kinds, from publicizing events to maintaining our social media presence, to photographing products that we sell in our store. And I also write blog posts, run free guided meditation sessions in Google Plus Hangouts (which you can see on my Youtube channel), correspond with people who write to me asking for advice about meditation, and run the Wildmind Community on Google Plus.
The admin really gets in the way of the teaching work I do, and so I need more help in the office. Actually, I need someone to run the office, so that I can concentrate on writing and teaching. That’s why we’re fundraising.
I have seen the future, and his name is Mark
We’ve found the perfect person to be Wildmind’s business manager. He’s smart, detail-oriented, a great planner, and a man with a big heart and a passion for helping people. His name is Mark Tillotson.
It’s our aim to raise $22,000 so that we can pay Mark to work here for six months, during which time he’ll free me up to teach. Following on from our 100 Day Meditation Challenge and our 100 Days of Lovingkindness from earlier this year, Mark has already helped me to develop a stunning program of activities for 2014, which we’ll be announcing shortly.
What about after that six month period? The $22,000 is seed money. Seeds grow. And Mark’s presence here will help free me up so that I can bring out more CDs and write books — the kinds of things that have been the core of Wildmind’s support since we started.
You can support our Free Bodhi Fund by visiting our project page at Indiegogo.
What’s in it for you?
Apart from the good karma and the warm glow of supporting an organization that does a lot of good in the world, we’re offering you perks for supporting us. You can give whatever you like; we have perks for all levels of donations:
$5 donation: We’ll send you a $5 coupon for our store, which you can use to download guided meditation MP3s. What a deal!
$15 donation: We’ll send you a $15 coupon for our store, which you can use to download guided meditation MP3s.
$50 donation: You’ll receive a set of six guided meditation CDs by Bodhipaksa: Guided Meditations, Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction, Guided Meditations for Busy People, The Heart’s Wisdom, Sacred Sound, Mindfulness Meditations for Teens. (We’ll even pay the shipping.)
$108 donation: You’ll participate in a four-week online meditation course led by Bodhipaksa, which includes guided meditation MP3s. (Normally this costs $120.)
$250 donation: You’ll become a member of Wildmind’s Life Member Program, which gives you access to the course materials from eight online meditation courses, which include readings and guided meditation MP3s. You can also choose one of Bodhipaksa’s guided meditation CDs.
$1000 donation: As well as access to our Life Member Program you’ll also receive two hours of one-on-one meditation coaching from Bodhipaksa, either on Skype on in a Google+ Hangout.
We do hope you’ll support us, both by becoming a donor and by sharing our project with your friends and social media contacts. This is the most important thing we’ve ever done at Wildmind. It’s really going to free me up so that I can teach more. And that’s going to help not only you, but hundreds of thousands — even millions — of other people.
You can give at our Indiegogo project page.
Related posts:
An interview with Bhikkhu Bodhi.
Free meditation cassettes for inmates
Bodhi Tree Swaying
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November 2, 2013
Taking in the good
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Using a mobile phone while pregnant can seriously damage your baby – The Independent
Taking kindness to heart (Day 2)
Taking care of the present moment
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Guided meditation … by the riverside
I recorded this guided meditation using Google Glass while sitting by the river that runs by my office. Glass, which is like a mobile phone that you wear on your face like a pait of glasses, shows a first person view, so you’re seeing what I saw during the part of the meditation that my eyes were open. In fact this is a meditation that, unlike most of those I lead, involves starting with the eyes open.
If you have any problem viewing the video, you can watch it on Youtube instead.
My purchase of Google Glass was made possible, in part, by a kind donation from Adrian Lucas, who runs a hydroponic microfarm in Florida, and who teaches other people how to do likewise.
Thanks, Adrian!
Please support Sassakala by visiting Adrian’s website.Related posts:
Looking with loving eyes (through Google Glass)
Meditation, technology, and Google Glass
Guided compassion meditation (karuna bhavana)
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November 1, 2013
Laurie Anderson, on the death of her husband, Lou Reed
What a beautiful fall! Everything shimmering and golden and all that incredible soft light. Water surrounding us.
Lou and I have spent a lot of time here in the past few years, and even though we’re city people this is our spiritual home.
Last week I promised Lou to get him out of the hospital and come home to Springs. And we made it!
Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature. He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air.
Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us.
— Laurie Anderson
his loving wife and eternal friend
Laurie Anderson is, as far as I'm aware, a Buddhist — or at least has been deeply influenced by Buddhism.
Related posts:
Inmate meditation group celebrates fourth anniversary
Thoughts of death make us cling to group membership
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Words of kindness, words of compassion
There are many ways to develop metta (kindness, or lovingkindness), which is the desire that beings, ourselves included, be happy. Kindness arises from a basic realization that all beings want to be happy, and that their happiness and suffering are as real to them as our own happiness and suffering are to us. Recognizing those facts, and knowing that we ourselves want to be happy, we naturally wish happiness for others.
Kindness is inherent in us all, and in the meditation practice we’re strengthening what’s already there, not bringing something entirely new into being.
The most well-known way to cultivate metta is drop phrases into the mind that strengthen and develop our kindness. When I was taught the metta bhavana (development of lovingkindness) meditation practice, the phrases I was given were: “May all beings be well; may all beings be happy; may all beings be free from suffering.” (In the first four stages “all beings” is replaced with “I” or “you.”)
These are excellent phrases, although not everyone finds that they resonate and there’s no need to stick to those exact words. I’ve often encouraged people to experiment and to find phrases that are effective in evoking a sense of kindness and love. I’ve still tended, on the whole, to stick with those particular words, though. They’re deeply embedded in my mind, since I was taught them over 30 years ago and have repeated them probably hundreds of thousands of times.
But in recent years I’ve seen that there’s a good reason to change the phrases I use, and nowadays I tend to use, and teach, the metta phrases like this: “May all beings be well; may all beings be happy; may all beings find peace.”
The reason I stopped using “May all beings be free from suffering” and started using “May all beings find peace” is because I’ve been doing more exploration of a practice related to the metta bhavana: the karuna bhavana. Karuna is compassion, and the karuna bhavana is the meditation practice in which we cultivate compassion.
Metta (kindness) is the desire that beings be happy; karuna (compassion) is the desire that beings be free from suffering. The relationship between the two is simply that when we want beings to be happy and are aware that they suffer, we want their suffering to be removed. Kindness naturally turns into compassion whenever we become aware of suffering.
Now the problem with using the phrase “May all beings be free from suffering” in the metta bhavana practice is that it’s inherently a phrase that evokes compassion rather than kindness. Metta, strictly speaking, is about wishing happiness rather than removing suffering. When we use the phrase “May all beings be free from suffering” in the metta practice we’re actually cultivating both metta and compassion at the same time. This isn’t a huge problem, but it does muddy the distinction between metta and karuna. So purely from the standpoint of wanting to be clear in my teaching I prefer to avoid talking about wanting beings to be free from suffering as part of the metta practice.
If you like my articles and want to support the work I do, please click here to check out my books, guided meditation CDs, and MP3s. Or you can make a donation.Making this change to the phrases, when you start practicing the karuna bhavana practice you feel more of a shift in what you’re doing. It’s clearer that metta is kindness — wanting beings to be happy — and that compassion is another — wanting beings to be free from suffering so that they can be happy. In the karuna bhavana I use phrases like: “May all beings be free from suffering; May all beings have joy and ease.”
It’s a small shift, to reserve “May all beings be free from suffering” for the compassion meditation, but it’s one that I’ve find brings more of a sense of clarity to the practice.
Now as I’ve said, this isn’t a huge deal. Compassion is inherent in kindness. If we’re developing the desire that beings be well and happy then it’s natural to wish them freedom from suffering. And sometimes when you’re cultivating metta you’re going to be aware of someone’s suffering and compassion will naturally arise, since compassion is simply kindness meeting an awareness of suffering. I’m certainly not suggesting that you shouldn’t experience compassion during the metta bhavana practice! But there is a difference between metta and karuna, and I think it’s useful — without being too strict about it — to respect that difference.”
“May all beings be well; may all beings be happy; may all beings find peace.”
Related posts:
Cultivating compassion (Day 26)
An awareness imbued with compassion (Day 49)
Bringing kindness to mind (Day 1)
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