Practice, practice, practice

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Wer Menschen sucht, wird Akrobaten finden.​    

– Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern

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Science as practice

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How do our views of what-meditation-is shape and limit our meditation research? 

How do our views of what-psychotherapy-is shape and limit our psychotherapy research?

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Just as the history of science usually presumes that the scientists who do their disciplines already exist, the history of art has assumed since time immemorial that artists are the natural protagonists of the business that produces works of art, and that these players have always existed as well. What would happen if we rotated the conceptual stage ninety degrees in both cases? What would happen if we observed artists in their efforts to become artists in the first place? We could then see every phenomenon on this field more or less from a side view and, alongside the familiar history of art as a history of completed works, we could obtain a history of the training that made it possible to do art and the asceticism that shaped artists.

– Peter Sloterdijk, The Art of Philosophy

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Meditation as practice

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I have practiced meditation regularly for 14 years and spent 2 years on silent retreats. The frameworks that I have found most helpful are Rob Burbea's teachings on emptiness (Seeing That Frees) and his approach to cultivating samadhi (Practising the Jhanas). I also feel inspired by different streams of non-dual practice.

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‘All exists’: Kaccāna, this is one extreme. ‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma by the middle.    

– Samyutta Nikāya 12:15