Beingfulness vs. Abhidharma - Slicing Up the Meaty, Messy Pie of Our Experience
I was doing this practice with Mingyur Rinpoche, and he was teaching what's known as the Abhidharma, which is a very old form of Buddhism.
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Alistair Appleton
Mar 263 min read
6 Tips for Accessing the Emotions on the Cushion
This is an excerpt from the session on emotions on Monday (25th March 2024) where I give some tips about accessing the second field, the...
326 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jan 254 min read
Worrying is NOT caring
This is an edited transcript of a lovely discussion we had this Tuesday in our anxiety/stress class on Zoom. We were discussing the...
977 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
Nov 30, 20231 min read
Music for Well-Being
I got this interesting link from Reasons to be Cheerful (David Byrne's excellent website). How do concert spaces make themselves more...
238 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Nov 9, 20233 min read
The Paramitas: where the rubber of practice hits the road of reality
If you've been following our Live Sessions of late, you may have noticed this word paramita cropping up again and again. Apologies if it...
319 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Aug 23, 20234 min read
Make Your Own Retreat
I am a big fan of organised retreats. There is something so potent and human in being with a group of people who signed up for a week or...
547 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jun 29, 20236 min read
Going Outdoors to Enter the Presence
I am entering one of my periodic periods of great doubt. I have these on a fairly regular basis - once every five years, perhaps - and...
1,315 views28 comments
Alistair Appleton
Apr 19, 20238 min read
Can we meditate while the world is burning?
A participant in the last retreat I led asked a very good question that often arises in retreats. “It’s all very well us pondering our...
476 views6 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jan 9, 20236 min read
Sitting Out practice
The January full moon over the Seven Sisters, 2022. WHAT IS SITTING OUT? I’ve been exploring a practice called ‘sitting out’. It’s not a...
874 views27 comments
Alistair Appleton
May 22, 20222 min read
The two big questions for meditation beginners.
One of the MIndsprings members asked a very pertinent question today about starting out on her meditation journey: Where am I going to do...
364 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jan 21, 20224 min read
Every broken heart is sacred
The final blog in my series of seven from 2013 is perhaps the juiciest of them all. I was all tender from a very intense, heart-breaking...
255 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jan 5, 20226 min read
No more future anymore
This is a rather epic blog about the future and the nature of stress. Looking back from the vantage of 2022, I can see how the eight...
101 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Dec 15, 20216 min read
Like worms towards the motorway
The sixth of the blogs from 2014. This one is quite self-contained and doesn’t require many annotations from 2022. There is a Nibbana...
32 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Mar 5, 20218 min read
Mother Nature doesn’t care about suffering. Buddha does.
I have been really deeply inspired by the experience of leading the Dharma Days for Mindsprings. After my initial introduction to the...
38 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Feb 25, 20215 min read
Dynamiting the prison of the present
Karen spoke about feeling trapped in the present. As meditators, we’re always encouraged to stay in the present and “be here now”, but...
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Alistair Appleton
Jan 14, 20215 min read
Language #2: The Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic
In the first part of this blog on language and thinking, I argued that the human experience of thinking is fundamentally grounded in...
3 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Sep 5, 20174 min read
Talk at the British Museum
One of the lovely things about being a teacher for a while is that ex-students pop up in unusual places. I was really incredibly...
6 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Aug 28, 20174 min read
Ryan#5: Dharma Poetics
These are the Silence Islands where what outsiders would consider almost imperceptible aural amusements land like coconuts on the...
4 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Aug 25, 20174 min read
Start of Term
It feels like the start of term. After our unseasonably early Summer and hot spells, the year seems to have been teased into running a...
3 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Dec 2, 20162 min read
Ten Reasons Why Samadhi is so Necessary Right Now
Samadhi, the forgotten twin sister of mindfulness practice, is a meditation approach that focuses on spaciousness and steadiness. In this...
5 views0 comments
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