Meditation Resource List

If your illness or life circumstances prevent you from attending meditation classes it can be very helpful to have a good book or CD course to guide your practice.

Below are some resources that might be useful. They’re divided into two groups – the first is specifically aimed at illness/pain, and the second is a list of general resources.

Resources specifically for people with chronic illness or pain

Darlene Cohen - a Zen teacher, who has rheumatoid arthritis. One of her books is Turning Suffering Inside Out (A Zen approach to living with physical and emotional pain). She has a website with podcasts, written talks, and more books.  Darlene’s work tends to be thought-provoking, funny and wise.  She’s a real straight-talker, and shares a lot of her personal experiences with pain in her books and talks.

Toni Bernhard – an ex-law professor now living with CFS.  Toni has written a book called ‘How to Be Sick’, which will be released in September 2010. The book is a beautifully written Buddhist-inspired guide for the chronically ill and their carers.  I’ve read a few chapters of it and found it eloquent, moving, and very down-to-earth.

Jon Kabat-Zinn - One of his books is the well-known, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness.  His website sells CD’s of his books and meditations.

Miriam Greenspan – Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair .This is a fairly intense book, and beautifully written.  Miriam talks about the usefulness of feelings such as despair, and offers many different techniques for working with the ‘dark emotions’.

Pema Chodren –   When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

Shinzen Young -  books, CD’s and a website specialising in meditation for pain management. His Book/CD set Break Through Pain contains a series of guided meditations with step-by-step techniques to help with pain management. I find some of Shinzen’s guided meditations to be a little clinical and dry, but they are certainly thorough and he's developed some interesting meditation techniques.

Steven Levine - a renowned writer and meditation teacher whose work focuses on death, dying, illness and the spiritual journey. He has written many books and has a personal website which sells CD’s of his guided meditations.  Steven’s books are intense, and can be heavy reading at times.  They are also profound, deeply moving, and very human.

Vidyamala Burch -  a UK teacher who lives with a spinal cord injury. She has a website, and a book, Living Well with Pain and Illness: The mindful way to free yourself from suffering.

                                                                                                                        

General  meditation resources

Bodhipaksa – meditation teacher with a very friendly and informative website with free on-line tutorials. He will  answer e-mail questions about meditation and also has an excellent CD called Guided Meditation: for Calmness, Awareness, and Love.  I’ve got the CD and highly recommend it for anyone looking for guided meditations.

Meditation Oasis – free meditation podcasts and a written meditation guide. The meditation podcasts  are short, simple and easy to follow.  The website also sells an online medition course (US$95) and CD's of meditations.

Plumline – an on-line Buddhist meditation group, conducted through Yahoo Messenger. Useful for people who want to connect with other meditators, but can’t leave their home to do it. Currently they meet on Mondays at 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM US Mountain Time Zone. (The 6pm group is 11am in Australia).

Sharon Salzberg  - a down-to-earth teacher focussing on insight and Loving Kindness meditation.  Has a website with books and CD’s and here is a link to a podcast of a full-day workshop with Sharon.

Sounds True – on-line store selling a wide variety of meditation and spiritual CDs and downloads. Has an excellent free weekly podcast interview series called Insights at the Edge. Many of the teacher s and writers listed in this article have been interviewed in this series.

Tara Brach  - Tara is a psychologist and teacher of Buddhist insight meditation. She has a particular focus on dealing compassionately with issues such as shame and anger. Her website has books, cd's and podcasts. A very gifted teacher who combines psychology and Buddhism.

I hope this list is useful to you.  Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any more resources I could add to this list. 

My Breath and I, We’re the Best of Mates

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia. 

Last night, after an intense meditation where I was feeling a lot of tension and resistance in my mind and body, I went up to the monastery library to see if I could find anything helpful to read.  I really felt completely stuck – I could observe the tension, the fighting, the utter dislike of my own thoughts and experience – but I couldn’t find any way of working with them.  Every ‘technique’ I tried just left me feeling more and more stuck. 

I found a book by the Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm called Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond. Ajahn Brahm was born in the UK, but for many years has been the Abbot of a monastery in Australia.  (He’s currently in the news for controversially ordaining women, and being kicked out of the Thai lineage his monastery  belonged to...but that’s another story).

Often when I go searching for something in a book that will help me during my ‘stuck’ periods I find nothing, but this time I found a really beautiful section on relating to meditation in a friendly, relaxed, way.  It was exactly what I needed to read.  Here’s the section – may you find it useful too.

‘I love meditation.  I enjoy it so much...Meditation is like a dear old friend that you want to spend time with...as for the meditation object, the breath, we’ve had such a good time together, my breath and I. We’re the best of mates...The opposite of course, is when you know you have to be with that friggin breath and you don’t like it...you see it coming along the other side of the street and you think, ‘Oh my God, here it is again.’

I use the following method to overcome any ill will toward my breath.  I look upon my breath like a newborn son or daughter.  Would you leave your baby at the shopping mall and just forget it?  Would you drop it as you’re walking on the road? If you appreciated your breath as much as your child or someone else who is very, very dear to you and very vulnerable, you would never drop, forget, or abandon it. ...When you have loving-kindness towards the meditation object you do not need much effort to hold it.’

I just love Ajahn Brahm’s happy, uncomplicated, joyful view of meditation.  After I read this I realised how much I see meditation as a chore; ‘I’m sick, and I’ve obviously done something wrong to be given this illness, so now I’ve got to do all this awful, boring, hard work to get better.’  I usually feel like I’m trudging along a long road with a heavy load.  Reading Ajahn Brahm’s book is a good reminder to me to take things a little more lightly – and a lot more kindly.

                                                                       Ajahn Brahm