Meditation pdf

Ceionius Commodus, whom Antoninus had adopted as a younger son at the same time with Marcus, giving him the name of Lucius Aurelius Verus. Henceforth the two are colleagues in the empire, the junior being trained as it were to succeed. No sooner was Marcus settled upon the throne than wars broke out on all sides. In the east, Vologeses III. Verus was sent off in hot haste to quell this rising; and he fulfilled his trust by plunging into drunkenness. Soon after Marcus had to face a more serious danger at home in the coalition of several powerful tribes on the northern frontier.

Chief among those were the Marcomanni or Marchmen, the Quadi mentioned in this book , the Sarmatians, the Catti, the Jazyges. During these wars, in , Verus died. We have no means of following the campaigns in detail; but thus much is certain, that in the end the Romans succeeded in crushing the barbarian tribes, and effecting a settlement which made the empire more secure.

Marcus was himself commander-in-chief, and victory was due no less to his own ability than to his wisdom in choice of lieutenants, shown conspicuously in the case of Pertinax. There were several important battles fought in these campaigns; and one of them has become celebrated for the legend of the Thundering Legion.

In a battle against the Quadi in , the day seemed to be going in favour of the foe, when on a sudden arose a great storm of thunder and rain the lightning struck the barbarians with terror, and they turned to rout. In later days this storm was said to have been sent in answer to the prayers of a legion which contained many Christians, and the name Thundering Legion should be given to it on this account.

This is completely free Soft copy ebook. Looking for guided meditation scripts? In this post we will review the best places to download meditation scripts to use in meditative videos, yoga classes, relaxation, and healing.

What is guided meditation Benefits of guided meditation What is guided meditation script 5 places to download guided meditation scripts 5 Tips for writing your own meditation script Resources for making guided meditation audio and videos. Guided meditation is a type of meditation mindfulness practice led by a teacher, in person or via audio or video.

The purpose of guided meditations is to lead the listener to understand the dynamics of the mind, how it is going to react to the meditation, and how to apply the meditation technique, either during the session or in everyday life. Often coupled with relaxing meditation music, guided meditations can help with mental and physical healing, relaxation, stress relief, better sleep, as well as coping with grief and anxiety.

If you are a yoga teacher or a YouTube creators making meditation videos you may wonder what are the advantages of guided meditation over other meditation techniques.

However, having an experienced teacher who can help you explore the intricacies and subtleties of your mind can be very helpful, especially for beginners. There are quite a few places where you can get paid or free meditation scripts for your videos or classes. Shoshana Hebshi-Holt, a yoga instructor at Love To Know posted 9 short and long free meditation scripts that will help you to remain focused during the meditation, stay in the present moment and to experience greater awareness and consciousness.

These relaxation scripts will help children and teens to alleviate stress and anxiety, improve self-esteem, feel better about themselves, and to develop a positive mental attitude. Looking for something more visual?

Charleston Counseling put together a great collection of 10 guided meditation scripts aimed specifically at healing PSTD and addiction.

We tried to find free scrips that can be used with no strings attached. However, before using any of the above meditation scripts in your videos or for any commercial purpose, we strongly advise to check with each individual site to verify that.

Gratitude 2. When not being able to clear the mind, a vital state of tension, fear and suffering is produced. Generally, most of our thoughts are negative and self-protective, which does not allow us to open up to positive life experiences.

Discover how this mechanism works with our meditation books. Meditation is a mental training that seeks to direct the attention to the present moment, letting the thoughts go by without attaching ourselves to any of them.

To meditate is not always simple, since we usually retain thoughts, turning them over, generating a successive chain in which we submit the whole day. It requires practice, constancy and discipline for mastering the technique.

The final objective of meditation is to achieve inner peace. The benefits of meditation are numerous, because at some point you manage your emotions very well, abandoning the judgments against them. According to the practitioners of the meditation the emotions are not harmful by themselves, what hurts are the thoughts that are derived from feeling them, thoughts that perceive them as bad.

The repression of the emotion creates the retention effect that meditation seeks to release. Continue to explore about this interesting topic through our more than 20 books about meditation in PDF format. Download them quickly and safely in this section. Evans Source: Oxford University Press Remember me on this computer. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up. Download Free PDF.

Buddhist Meditation Theory and Practice. Stephen M. Charles Goodman. A short summary of this paper. Yet meditation is fairly marginal in the lives of most ordinary followers of Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism, and these religions teach several paths to salvation that do not depend on meditative experiences.

Most lineages of Buddhism, by contrast, place meditative accomplishment at the center of their understanding of how to achieve liberation from suffering. In many contem- porary Buddhist contexts, everyone — whether lay or monastic, man or woman — is expected to meditate and to gain some of the considerable beneits that practice can bring.

The Three Forms of Training can be seen as three progressively higher stages of development, but they also reinforce one another. By producing a quiet, moderate life and reducing disturbing emotions, moral discipline creates appropriate conditions for the inner work needed to stabilize attention.

Stable attention, which is cultivated through and attained in meditation practice, produces emotional health, making the practitioner much less likely to want to violate the commitments of moral discipline. Buddhists claim further that stable attention in meditation leads directly to wisdom. We will be examining in detail the plausibility of this claim and the grounds that could be offered for it.

Wisdom, in turn, by making it possible to see how things are, overcomes temptations to break moral discipline and dissolves obstacles to stable attention. Together, the three forms of training are said to lead to an inner state of peace, clarity, freedom from suffering, kindness, compassion, and happiness.

Edited by Steven M. Most forms of Buddhist meditation do not require any particular doctrinal commitments, meta- physical assumptions, or leaps of faith in order to work as advertised. You need only suficient conidence in the practice to invest the effort and time needed to make it work. Doing so may or may not lead a practitioner to gravitate towards a Buddhist worldview. According to Buddhists, then, meditation can be helpful to people in general, whether they currently ind other aspects of Buddhist teaching plausible or not.

What reason is there to believe that meditation actually offers any of the beneits claimed for it? Breathing Mindfulness Meditation Across most Buddhist traditions, one of the most important practices available, and one of the foundational practices for any other kind of spiritual work, involves bringing attention to the experience of breathing.

Known as breathing mindfulness meditation P. While sitting in this way, there is no place to hide from your own emotional turmoil. In order to carry out the practice, you must face all the sensations, emotions, or thoughts that arise, without holding on to them or pushing them away.

Through this demanding form of effort, patience and courage begin to grow: the patience to be present with the storm of chaos in your mind and the courage to face what is dificult for you to experience. To do the actual practice, sit still with your back straight. A sense of relaxation, of ease, will help this practice to work. On the other hand, if you feel a slight pain or itch, simply rest and do not do anything about it.

This can be a highly valuable spiritual practice. If the pain becomes intense, you may move so as to relieve it. Bring attention to the experience of breathing. Rest without trying to force the breath to take on any particular form. Do not try to make your breath deep or shallow, short or long, fast or slow. Simply allow the breath to be entirely natural, but watch it. Gradually, as you relax, your breathing may naturally become deeper and slower. Notice the details of how you are breathing, without trying to control them.

Inevitably, distractions will arise, and you will lose touch with the breath. If many distractions appear, and you do not feel peaceful at all, do not think that you are doing E1 the practice incorrectly.

To draw this conclusion is a common mistake. Instead, whenever you notice that you have become distracted, gently bring the attention back to the breath. The moment when you notice that you have become distracted is the most crucial point of this prac- tice.

By bringing attention back to the breath at this moment, you gradually build a greater capacity for clear, stable attention. Many beginners ind it helpful to count the breath. One complete cycle of inhalation and exhalation counts as one.

Keep counting up to ten; if you reach ten, start counting again at one. If you become distracted and lose count, when you notice this, just start counting again at one. If you are practicing alone, it is helpful to set a timer of some kind to chime when the meditation session ends, so that you do not have to keep looking at your watch. When you sit down with the intention to practice for a certain amount of time, make sure you continue to practice for the entire time you intended. If your legs cannot continue to hold your sitting posture, then stand up for a minute or two, keep bringing attention to the breath while standing, and then, once your legs are a bit refreshed, sit back down again.

Moving forward in this practice involves inding a middle point of attention that is neither agitated nor dull. If the mind is very agitated, with thoughts rushing this way and that way incessantly, simply return again and again to the breath.

Gradually, it will become possible to rest in the experience of the coming and going of thoughts, while remaining vividly aware of them. To prevent dullness, it is helpful to get enough sleep! Proper meditation posture can help counter- act dullness. And many meditators discover that agitation and dullness are related to the angle of the gaze.

If the direction of your gaze is too low, you may be more likely to encounter dullness, and if the direction is too high, you may have more of a problem with agitation. If your experience is similar, adjusting your gaze can help ind a balance where neither extreme disrupts your attention. Some people ind that, at the beginning of a practice session, their minds are full of distractions, but that gradually, as they continue to sit still, agitated thoughts settle down and clarity begins to emerge.

If your experience in meditation is like theirs, you should try to develop the capacity to sit for longer and longer periods of time, so as to deepen your engagement with the practice. By contrast, other people ind that they begin a practice session with suficient energy and strength of intention that their mind quickly settles down, and they can rest in the breath with few distractions for a while; but, over time, the mind loses its ability to rest, distractions become more frequent, and they are overwhelmed by agitation or dullness.

If your experience is like theirs, it will be more helpful to sit for shorter periods of time — perhaps just 10 minutes — but aim to do several practice sessions a day. When it comes to breathing mindfulness meditation, more is often better. At irst, though, it is not necessary to commit a great deal of time in order to see the beneits.

The most important quality is consistency — to practice every day, or as close to this as you are able. With consistent, sincere practice, even 10 or 15 minutes of breathing mindfulness a day is likely to bring about valuable and signiicant changes in your life.

Do not try to force your mind to become empty or quiet. The effort and strain E1 expended to try to hold the mind still will simply lead to more mental disturbances.

If you stir it to try to force it to be clear, you will only arouse the mud. If you just let the jar sit for a while, the mud and dirt will naturally drift downwards, and the water will become clear by itself.

Do not get caught up in expectations about what you are supposed to experience while sitting. During meditation, very unpleasant thoughts or images may arise, reveal- ing truths about the depths of your mind that injure your pride. Do not try to suppress these or push them away. Just let them go naturally, and return to the breath.

Alter- nately, good and virtuous thoughts might arise. Do not tell stories about them or try to hold on to them. Try to be patient and accepting towards whatever arises in meditation. There is no need to rush. Just let your experience be whatever it naturally is, and keep coming back to the breath. These and other valuable pieces of advice about the attitude to take while practicing medita- tion can be found in Gunaratana , 39— Today, many psychologists would agree: the cultivation of mindfulness is increasingly becoming recognized as a powerful way to alleviate and heal some kinds of psychological problems and the suffering they cause.

He was conident that they would ind, as he did, that practice of this kind is highly effective in relieving the suffering of human life and opening the door to joy and peace. Walking Meditation The most powerful forms of walking meditation usually involve dramatically slowing down the pace of walking. One effective method is to synchronize your steps with your breathing. Take one step on the in-breath and one step on the out-breath. Do not force your breathing to keep pace with your walking; instead, adjust the speed of walking to the natural low of the breath.

Do not leave your feet on the ground for long periods of time, occasionally taking a quick step. Instead, slow down the entire process of walking, so that one of your feet is off the ground most of the time. This way of walking requires you to bring attention into the subtle movements of your legs and feet, which is very much the intention of the practice. Make an effort to keep some of your attention con- tinuously resting in the sensations you are experiencing in your feet.

When you notice that you have lost touch with your feet, gently bring attention back to them. Walking meditation can be done more quickly if you have somewhere to go. Just make sure to keep some attention in the sensations in your feet. You can move at a reasonable pace and still keep the breath and your steps together if you take two steps on the in-breath and two steps on the out-breath. Or you can take attention off the breath, and just make sure some attention is present in the sensations in your feet.

This can be a major enhancement to your practice, but it is not exactly a free lunch: unless you are regularly doing sitting meditation as well, it will be very dificult to sustain your attention while walking, and your intention to do walking meditation will bring fewer beneits. There are a number of variants on the basic practice of walking meditation.

In one charming version, you imagine that the world, like a giant beach ball, is rolling under- neath you as you walk. In other words, while paying attention to the sensations in your feet, you change your perspective such that you are not moving; the earth is turning under you, moved by your steps.

Though the practice of walking meditation requires keeping some attention in your feet, as well as the attention involved in bringing your feet and breath into the same rhythm, nothing prevents you from also noticing the scene around you. Objects that catch your eye may begin chains of thought that distract you. When you notice this, simply bring your attention back to the sensations in your feet.

But, of course, you need to have your eyes open so that you can see where you are going! And if you can be aware of visual sensations without being distracted from your feet, then it is possible to develop a whole new level of appreciation of nature. Through this practice, you can cultivate mindfulness and stable attention while enjoying the vivid beauty of a world seen with less attachment and distortion.

Through resting meditation practices such as mindfulness of breathing, it is possi- ble to nourish and strengthen the capacity for attention. The impact of meditation begins to be felt in daily life when clear, stable attention becomes available to improve the quality of engagement with other activities.

One of the best ways to create the conditions for this change is walking meditation. Through walking meditation, we can learn to bring attention to a simple activity. In this way, we can gradually learn to be more mindful in all aspects of life. Close your eyes and think of someone towards whom you have strong, uncomplicated positive feelings. Some people can use one of their parents for this purpose — but not all of us are so fortunate! A suitable person would be someone who has showed you genuine kindness at some point in the past, such as a teacher or very good friend.

A young child would not be a good choice. A living person is a better choice than a deceased person. Do not choose someone towards whom you are sexually attracted.

Visualize this person in your mind and, with your thoughts, wish for this person to have every kind of good fortune and well-being you can think of, focusing on the wish for the person to be happy. May George have health, good fortune, and long life. May he not have to be sick, or sad, or in pain, but may he be happy.

May good things happen to George. May his dreams come true. May he live in harmony with all those around him.

May George E1 ind peace. May he ind joy. May he ind real, lasting happiness. May George be happy.