Meditation
Introduction to Mindful Meditation: Online Course
Instructional series for beginning meditators by Gil Fronsdal, primary teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA. These classes provide a good overview of insight meditation (Vipassana) practice as well as many guided meditation sessions which help the student learn how to establish and sustain a daily meditation practice.
During this 6 week introductory course, the basic instructions in insight meditation are given sequentially, each week building on the previous one. The first week focuses on mindfulness of breathing. The second week expands our attention to mindfulness of the body, to include all our physical experiences. The third week introduces mindfulness of emotions. The fourth week addresses mindfulness of thinking. The fifth week focuses on the “quality” of the mind, on the state of the mind. The sixth week focuses on the role of mindfulness in daily life and in deepening one’s spiritual life.
Insight meditation is nothing more mysterious than developing our ability to pay attention to our immediate experience. We are often preoccupied with thoughts about the past or the future or with fantasies. While sometimes such preoccupations may be innocent and harmless, more often they contribute to stress, fear and suffering. Mindfulness practice is learning how to overcome preoccupation so that we can see clearly what is happening in our lived experience of the present. In doing so, we find greater clarity, trust, and integrity. Mindfulness relies on an important characteristic of awareness: awareness by itself does not judge, resist, or cling to anything. By focusing on simply being aware, we learn to disentangle ourselves from our habitual reactions and begin to have a friendlier and more compassionate relationship with our experience, with ourselves and with others.
Mindfulness is the practice of being attentively present. It is called a practice in the same way that we say that people practice the piano. Being attentive is a skill that grows with practice. It develops best if we set aside any self-conscious judgements or expectations of how our meditation is developing. The practice is simply to relax and bring forth an awareness of what is happening in the present.
In order both to develop the skill and experience the joys of non-reactive presence, a daily meditation practice is helpful.
- What is Insight Meditation (Vipassana)?
- What is Mindful Breathing?
- Instruction: Mindfulness of Breathing
- Excercises for First Week
