Meditation Appreciation Course
Below is exerpted from an email to one of my students regarding the Meditation Appreciation Course that I attended last year. Highly recommended. This secular course is offered Awareness Place at Bras Basah Complex. For details, please follow the link below.
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Good that you are signing up for the meditation course. Good that you are getting your friend in too. I am very sure you will find the experience interesting. The course is short though -- don't expect that you become an accomplished meditator at the end of it! But it gives a good intro to meditation without boring you or getting into too much heavy stuff. Still, it is easy and quick to give meditation instruction but hard to TEACH and LEARN meditation. The only sure thing is that regular practice has its definite rewards. The happiest thing for me in the course is simply to be in the same room with a bunch of people who are REAL. So much of our day to day interaction, even with our old friends is crippled by cliches, routine and dissatisfaction stemming from our individual unhappiness -- there is also a level of pretense in our interaction with people we just meet. So the meditation room is a welcome retreat - people are there to try to understand themselves better without illusions, without pretension. Some of the participants have been for the course before and are simply there to "revise" and practice together with others. So your practice will benefit from the experienced meditators in your midst. Ask lots of questions. Richard, the instructor, has heard them all so he gives good answers.
Learning to meditate is actually learning about yourself -- how you are composed at random by the processes of your mind. You learn to master your mind, let go of random mind and be whatever you want to be without fear or hesitation -- the goal of all yoga.
Happiness requires conscious effort, yes. But constant awareness is also just a habit. Nothing more cheem. The mind can be trained to be happy, as a matter of habit. Meditation is a good tool for this as it makes you very keenly aware of the nature of your mind.
Course info: http://kmspks.org/practice/med_appreciate.htm
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Good that you are signing up for the meditation course. Good that you are getting your friend in too. I am very sure you will find the experience interesting. The course is short though -- don't expect that you become an accomplished meditator at the end of it! But it gives a good intro to meditation without boring you or getting into too much heavy stuff. Still, it is easy and quick to give meditation instruction but hard to TEACH and LEARN meditation. The only sure thing is that regular practice has its definite rewards. The happiest thing for me in the course is simply to be in the same room with a bunch of people who are REAL. So much of our day to day interaction, even with our old friends is crippled by cliches, routine and dissatisfaction stemming from our individual unhappiness -- there is also a level of pretense in our interaction with people we just meet. So the meditation room is a welcome retreat - people are there to try to understand themselves better without illusions, without pretension. Some of the participants have been for the course before and are simply there to "revise" and practice together with others. So your practice will benefit from the experienced meditators in your midst. Ask lots of questions. Richard, the instructor, has heard them all so he gives good answers.
Learning to meditate is actually learning about yourself -- how you are composed at random by the processes of your mind. You learn to master your mind, let go of random mind and be whatever you want to be without fear or hesitation -- the goal of all yoga.
Happiness requires conscious effort, yes. But constant awareness is also just a habit. Nothing more cheem. The mind can be trained to be happy, as a matter of habit. Meditation is a good tool for this as it makes you very keenly aware of the nature of your mind.
Course info: http://kmspks.org/practice/med_appreciate.htm
