This form of meditation is one of India’s most ancient techniques of meditating and was discovered by Gautam Buddha more than 2500 years ago. It teaches human beings to see life just the way it is in all its reality without being affected by it. It focuses on observation of the self to realize true liberation from the cycle of rebirths also known as Moksha.
Learn how to practice Vipassana meditation:
There are some basic steps to start doing this form of meditation.
* Sit in a quiet place in a fairly dark room
* You will need to be undisturbed for at least 20 minutes
* Keep your head and spine straight
* You may sit on the floor or on a chair if needed
* Close your eyes to cut out any external influences
* Start focusing on your breathing
* Observe the length of each breath – whether short long or heavy
* Do not judge or try and control your breathing
* The key to Vipassana meditation is to act as a neutral spectator to your breathing
* Try to avoid your thoughts from being distracted
* In the beginning your thoughts may get distracted. Jus gently shift your focus back to the breathing
* With practice you will be able to focus on the breathing for long periods without distraction
* If questions and thoughts do arise, do not attend to them during the meditation
* Only once the meditation is over focus on these thoughts
Benefits of Vipassana meditation
This meditation teaches the middle path to life just as Lord Buddha had propagated. It helps us realize the emptiness of the human body and that the real Self is the soul. It teaches patience and benevolence towards all humans and things. Vipassana meditation is rooted in Indian scriptures and hence is an ancient technique of meditation which is practiced to this day.

Love, Meditate and Celebrate – This is the Mantra of Beautiful living that has been suggested by the Contemporary Enlightened Master – Anandmurti Gurumaa. Her teachings can be summarised in the three words – Love, Meditation and Celebration. These are the three essential ingredients for the complete man of the 21st Century.

Anandmurti Gurumaa is a Contemporary Woman Master. The word Anandmurti literally means ‘an embodiment of divine bliss’ and Gurumaa means ‘Master Mother’. Shri Anandmurti Gurumaa, true to her name, is a master, a mother and an embodiment of Bliss. She is an exquisite confluence of divine love and sharp intelligence. She is a mystic, a poet at heart with a scientific aptitude by intellect and possesses a strong personality.

Its unbelievable that all these amazing attributes exist together is one person. But its absolutely true. Gurumaa is very pragmatic in her approach towards life and is a wonderful personality who is giving hope and spiritual path to seekers worldwide to achieve Buddha hood in this very lifetime. Its hard to find such great persons in today’s time, which can truly guide the spiritual aspirants and enhance their spiritual growth by their rich experience.

Read the rest of this entry

There is a lot of talk these days about the groundbreaking book, The Secret, and about the process of the manifestation of our desires. It’s a fascinating subject. But it is not new information. The Law of Attraction, namely, like attracts like, is a very old knowledge. The bible attests to this when it states, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap”. What you do comes back to you. In India, there is the Law of Karma. It says that “Action comes back to you in equal measure. In Egypt, you have the Code of Hammarabi. It states the familiar, “An eye for an eye”. If you do sometime, it comes back to you equally. Even in Newtonian Physics, action equals reaction. Basically, what we think is what we become. Another way of saying this is that we manifest what our attention is on. This has been the message of such great modern thinkers as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and motivational guru Toni Robbins.
Another point is that understanding the Law of Attraction is one thing, but being able to apply it in practical life is another. Here’s what I mean. If my mind is cluttered with a bunch of thoughts, how can I maintain my attention on what I desire long enough to manifest it. Let me give you a specific example. Let’s say that you and I and an Indian yogi, are hungry and we each put our attention manifesting a Kit Kat bar. What will happen? While you and I will remain struggling and hungry, the yogi will be enjoying his Kit Kat bar. For him, the bar manifested almost as soon as he thought the words Kit Kat. Why? The yogis’ attention is powerful and unbroken. He has cultured his brain and nervous system to manifest his desires with great efficiency.
Finally, the manifestation of objects such as houses, wealth and relationships are fine in themselves, but they do not guarantee happiness. This is a point that the Buddha made thousands of years ago. He concludes that desire and manifestation were actually the source of unhappiness. The Buddha devoted the rest of his life to finding a way to get beyond the problem of craving and desire.
To me, manifestation is just the mechanism through which Grace enters our world. Manifestation is the relationship of the subject to the object over time. The reality, and I use the term loosely, is that all of the objects of our everyday experience, are thoughts that have turned into matter. So, I thought that I would begin with a couple of manifestation stories to highlight this point.
Miracle Manifestation
Many times people would come to see me with very specific requests. They needed something right away. Here is an example. One day, a couple visited me at my office in Chennai. It seems that they were both school teachers who had been offered teaching positions in Atlanta, Georgia in the U.S. Unfortunately, this was post 9/11 and it was very difficult for Indian nationals to obtain the proper visas to travel to the U.S. This poor couple had been waiting for more than a year. They had given up their lucrative teaching jobs in Chennai and sold their house assuming that they would be leaving shortly. When I saw them, they were desperate and almost out of money. They asked me for a technique to help them manifest their desire to go to the U.S. I had them sit and close their eyes. Then I asked them put attention at the third eye (between the eyebrows). I asked them to picture a bright light there. Then I asked them each to imagine going to their mailbox where they lived and opening a letter. The letter contained their new travel visas. I had them place this image in their third eye and fill the image with a bright white light. This was at 11 o’clock in the morning. That night I was giving a lecture when my interpreter pulled me aside. He told me that the couple had just called. He said that they had come home and checked their mailbox only to find the letter with their travel visas just as they had pictured in my office. The question is, did the visas create the need for the mental image in my office or did the mental image in my office create the visas? The answer is that Grace created a synchronicity. Who cares whether the chicken or the egg came first.
How did this manifestation take place? What was the mechanism? Today, I want share with you some of the secrets of yogic manifestation. To accomplish this, it is first necessary to acquaint you with the mechanics of the human mind. Let’s begin with the term Samadhi. Yogis often use the term Samadhi. It is said to be the highest experience of yogic meditation. But Samadhi is not a useful state if we want to manifest our desires. Here’s why. Samadhi is a state of perfect silence. In Samadhi, this world vanishes and only pure conscious (consciousness without an object) remains. Nothing is left. The state of pure consciousness is a state of no movement. There are no qualities; no subject; no object; no relationship. Unfortunately, no desire can be entertained in Samadhi and manifestation requires desire. MANIFESTATION REQUIRES A RELATIONSHIP OF SUBJECT TO OBJECT OVER TIME. Yogis manifest from within the sphere of matter and change. They manifest from a spot where pure consciousness turns into matter. I will teach you how to take your awareness to this point. I will be teach you step by step how to manifest.
I am often asked the question, “Why can’t I manifest”? The answer is that you are desiring your manifestation from a false sense of I. You see your personal “I” and the world that your “I” exists in as separate. So you believe that it takes a lot of effort to put your desires into this foreign land that you live in. In reality, there is no difference between you and what you experience. Both take place inside the real you. You could not exist without the not-you so the not you is you too. Feel it. Look closely. Be perfectly still. To do this, completely stop your eyes and tongue from moving. (Try this for one minute)You are the other as much as you are yourself. Neither can exist independently of the other. Desiring and manifesting are just two sides of the same coin. Become the coin. The object of your desire is just you in reverse. A yogi has no trouble manifesting because he sees that he is actually the object of his desire. If a yogi desires a Lexus, he becomes it. The yogi moves effortlessly between subject and object. The yogi is both because the yogi is One with all things. He is living reality. The yogi lives the truth. To continue with this article, please click on americanbuddha.net.

While most religions in the world have some form of meditation as a core practice (be it Christian monasticism or Islamic daily prayer), none have made it so central a tenet as Buddhism has. As such, there are many variations in the practice and goals of meditation within Buddhism. This article therefore is necessarily an overview and brief introduction to the wide range of Buddhist meditation.
Buddhism has taught meditation to its adherents since the 5th century BC. Gautama Buddha (or simply “the Buddha”, meaning “he who has achieved enlightenment”), the founder of the religion and its supreme teacher sought escape from this world and found it in meditation. Since then, this has been passed on to his followers.
Broadly speaking, Buddhist meditation has as its goal the achievement of a deeper state of relaxation, or a heightened sense of awareness, a knowledge of the true nature of things. Ultimately, all meditation is seen as the path to enlightenment (a state in which a person is freed from all delusions about the world) and nirvana(a similar state, where one is free from greed and hate). Buddhism teaches that the root of all suffering and pain in the world is ignorance combined with greed and desire. On reaching nirvana, the soul is freed from all suffering, and indeed from the very cycle of rebirth.
Techniques for meditation vary between different schools of thought – for example, there are hundreds of traditional methods of achieving mindfulness (a state of mind in which you are strongly aware of the present moment and distant from your own thoughts) and there are thousands of mental visualisations used in meditation. Different forms of meditation are designed to develop different desirable characteristics: concentration, loving-kindness, compassion, wisdom, freedom and so forth. Many techniques are common however, such as a focus on breathing as a means to reach tranquility and awareness. This method, known as Anapanasati has been recommended as a method by itself to reach nirvana.
This technique usually involves sitting comfortably, back straight and with no difficulty breathing. The meditator breathes normally, observing their breaths and simply becoming aware of them. No attempt is made to regulate, simply to observe and become aware of the body and its functioning. Meanwhile the meditator is trained to focus on eliminating thought. To an untrained meditator, thoughts will constantly break the calm of meditation, but with practise, true mental tranquility can be achieved. While this simplifies, the ultimate goal is to eliminate thought and clear the mind through a series of stages to reach nirvana.
The philosophy of Buddhist meditation is therefore one of liberation – the teaching that man can escape from his self-imposed suffering through awareness of his surroundings and focusing his thoughts. Buddha sought to escape from old age, illness and death, and provided, through meditation, a prescription to his followers, an exhortation to follow him and hope to achieve his fate. Through clearing the mind of infirmities such as greed and hate, meditation seeks to heal the body of its infirmities.