This lesson dispels common myths about meditation and offers a simple guided meditation that you can do anywhere. With repeated practice, this meditation will help you manage your emotions.

The ego can function like a self-identity center, making us feel that we have to obey whatever our inner voice says. So how do you avoid becoming an involuntary slave of your ego habit? There are a number of meditation methods. The most basic one involves observing your breath or another object of awareness. The idea is to learn to disidentify from the constant stream of thinking going on in your head.To the beginner, meditation can be a confusing and frustrating endeavor, especially for those ...

It’s not a big house, a sports car, or a high-powered job that makes people happy. Again and again, research has shown that our true happiness stems from the quality of our relationships, how connected we feel with others.It’s not a big house, a sports car, or a high-powered job that makes people happy. Again and again, research has shown that our true happiness stems from the quality of our relationships, how connected we feel with others.“We can redefine happiness so that it’s not just… e...

According to meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg, simply experiencing negative feelings is not the problem. Your inner enemy manifests when you act on the wrong feelings. Take anger, for example. In the Buddhist psychology anger is likened to a forest fire which burns up its own support. Anger can destroy us.That is why Salzberg stresses the importance of learning to recognize your negative impulses early. The purpose of mindfulness training is to develop the ability to be aware of what you are ...

Unfortunately, compassion gets a bad rap, especially in the business world where the “rules” often seem to follow the law of the jungle. Sharon Salzberg, a Buddhist meditation expert and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, wants to change that.Compassion is a balancing act, says Salzberg. You don’t want to be too giving and then deplete the energy you need to make your own life thrive. This is why compassion is viewed as a skill that needs to be studied, practiced and mastered over ...

Part of deepening the bonds in our life and feeling connected to a greater purpose means living a life of compassion. Those aspects of Buddha’s teachings that have been preserved in various traditions share a belief in the interdependence and interconnectedness of all things – a kind of unified theory of everything. In effect, they argue that most of human reality as we know it is a distortion, the result of the delusions that afflict our individual minds, and that we perceive distinctions whe...

The greatest enemy we face - one that is indeed greater than any external threat - is the uncontrolled mind. This is the wisdom of the Buddhist master Shantideva, author of the 700 AD Sanskrit text Bodhisattvacharyāvatāra, or Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life.What is the uncontrolled mind? It is the mental habit that makes you timid when it comes to dealing with certain difficult situations and also allows oppressive and frustrated feelings to build up inside you. As a result, you might “...