Buddhism: Day 10 and 11 A reader e-mailed yesterday in response to my post, The Case Against DIY Religion. In the post, I argue that the DIY method to spiritual and ethics will likely be less effective than adopting an established a religion system. In her e-mail, she made the point that one of the

Buddhism: Day 8 and 9 The story of the Buddha is quite fascinating. The Buddha was actually born as Prince Siddhartha around the 5th century BCE, the heir of a ruling family. This guy had it made. He was good looking, had his own palace, a beautiful wife, and he was intelligent to boot. His

Buddhism: Week 1 Wrap-up Over the past week, I’ve done a total of 140 minutes of meditation (20 minutes per day x 7). While it would have been great if that were enough time to achieve nirvana, unfortunately that isn’t the case. Here’s what I’ve learned so far about meditation It is friggin’ hard! Whenever

Buddhism: Day 5-6 Yesterday I went on a 10 mile run with my running club.  I like running with group, especially during the long runs because it helps makes the run go by faster; the group is a welcome distraction from the aches and pains of pounding the pavement for an hour or more. However,

It turns out I was doing my meditation wrong. Apparently what you’re supposed to do is go through a set of stages that start with counting each individual breath, and then focusing on the breath, and then focusing on the sensation of the breath. For example, stage one requires you to count after each exhale.

Buddhism: Day 1 and 2 I did my first two meditations over the past few days and I have to say they were very….difficult.  Here’s how it went down: First, I would close my laptop, close the blinds in my apartment, and turn off all the lights. I set my iPhone timer to 20 minutes

At work the other day, I sat down to begin a task that I was not excited to do.  I opened up a Word document to start, but then I remembered that there was another task that I had to do as well. I thought it would only take a few minutes, so I begin