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Meditation online
Hi there,
I am new to the forum and am very happy that a lot of my beginners questions have been answered in other threads. Thank you to all of you.
However there is one question I would like to have your opinion about. Does an ONLINE course in meditation make sense?
Andrew Quernmore is offering a course which sounds very interesting to me under http://www.vipassana.com/course/.
Why am I thinking about this? I am living in New Zealand and haven't found a place local enough to join a real life class.
Looking forward on your thoughts about that.
I am new to the forum and am very happy that a lot of my beginners questions have been answered in other threads. Thank you to all of you.
However there is one question I would like to have your opinion about. Does an ONLINE course in meditation make sense?
Andrew Quernmore is offering a course which sounds very interesting to me under http://www.vipassana.com/course/.
Why am I thinking about this? I am living in New Zealand and haven't found a place local enough to join a real life class.
Looking forward on your thoughts about that.
0
Comments
I think the general consensus with courses is to be weary of courses that charge an up front fee.
Almost everything you could want to learn about Buddhism is available for free on the internet, and even the courses with dedicated instructors only require a small donation to a sangha.
Granted, the fee for the class you posted is rather small, i thought i would share what i have heard on sites like this before.
Honestly, even youtube has some pretty good meditation videos. I'm not sure what kind of meditation you are looking to do, but i would recommend zazen as a good starting point, and will provide this video as a good explanation of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csyCrcpDs58
I hope this post helped. Have fun on this site!
As with any other aspects of Buddhism, it depends on the individual. There are those who excel at visual learning, others at aural/auditory learning, and others by having a teacher. I'm sure "online teacher" would be useful.
When starting something new, I don't know where I will end or which meditation will be the right for me. Some 30 years ago I started to ask myself the question
WHY ????????????????
So I followed my journey from evolution over philosophy and I still haven't answered the question for myself. But I came to the point to think that the question is the problem.
When reading Schopenhauer I found once more a link to buddhism and so I started with reading a few books from Thich Nhat Hanh and the wonderful book Mindfulness in plain english.
After all the time reading and thinking I thought that its time for me to try a different approach. At the moment I feel that thinking doesn't help me to make the next step on my journey. I know that this short overview might not help to understand where I am coming from but what I want to feel/see/experience (learn is the wrong word in my opinion) is that my question WHY was interesting but didn't help to understand how everything is related.
My interest is in insight / mindfulness and I am looking for a start into this.
Thanks for the link as well, I will have a look into that.
Stephen, yes I understand what you are saying that it depends on preferences how someone will understand a topic best. Thanks for bringing this to my attention again.
Of course you can learn how to meditate online. Instructions are pretty straight-forward and simple to put into written form. You will not "lose out" by doing so.
The only drawback is that when you start to veer off-course, there is no teacher to nudge you back on-course. And if you have questions, we are the only ones you can ask ... and there is really no way to know if we are skillful teachers.
I say this because the Lam Rim text of Tibetan Buddhism talks about evaluating whether someone is a skillful teacher ... and their conduct is the first and strongest criteria. It's actions, not words, that truly indicate how skillful a teacher is, and you cannot observe online.
it's free, 10 days retreat.
This course/experience is given all over the world.
If you are far from the retreat, contact them and they can probably arrange for someone to pick you up...
Yes, I know someone who lives with no sangha in her area. She saves up all year so she can fly to an annual retreat and take teachings in person.
I think I will start on my own and use the resources available in the net.
Thank you all.
Access to Insight (http://www.accesstoinsight.org)
Dharma Seed (http://dharmaseed.org)
Buddhanet (http://www.buddhanet.net)
Free Buddhist Audio (http://www.freebuddhistaudio.com)
Talking Buddhism (http://www.talkingbuddhism.com)
and dozens more I can't remember off the top of my head.
The FPMT offer the second module, How To Meditate, in their Discovering Buddhism course for free. You can find it at http://onlinelearning.fpmt.org/ and there is a forum for questions arising from the module teaching. The sound quality isn't great and you need to buy the set text to accompany the audio teachings but it's otherwise gratis and seems sound enough to me.
Good luck and let us know if you find anything else worth trying.
For straightforward Buddhist meditation, I recommend this series of short videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd7a9Ur2x0o
Kind wishes to you,
Dazzle
.
Thank you for the information provided I look into them over the next days.
Thank you for the warm welcome.
Have a wonderful day
MyJourney