The Power of Meditation: Voices of Students (Part Five)

Over the past several weeks I’ve been working with students in a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training and helping them develop a daily meditation practice. I asked each student to explain, in their own words, their personal motivation for meditating. I’m sharing one student’s response per day. To read the introduction to this series, click here.


STUDENT 5:  “ Nothing to grasp, nothing to measure…”

Let meditation be what enables us to put the cart before the horse. Let us believe; let us put our faith in the unseen; let us trust the universe to guide us. Let the child in all of us emerge through our practice – the child, for whom imagination is everything. Let our imaginations not be limited by our experiences, for our experiences are simply one version – one manifestation of reality in a universe of infinite possibility. Let our eyes not limit what we see.

I have a history of OCD that simply means my mind is always trying to quantify, compartmentalize, control. Meditation allows me to tap into something that I cannot prove, cannot make sense of, cannot logically explain. And yet I feel it, feel the way it stirs me in ways I never thought possible. Not even my OCD can compete with that.

I believe that meditation is more real than anything I’ve ever experienced. I believe in the way it empowers as it teaches humility. I believe that if we believe, then we allow our faith to transform us. The magic of life becomes something tangible, something that becomes a part of our soul. That magic belongs to no one just as much as it belongs to everyone – it belongs to the universe, and as humans we embody it just long enough to realize that life is love. And if we allow that love to radiate through our souls, we begin to connect to one another, to help one another, to exist as one.

In this world that we live in, there's so much instant gratification available. We are almost conditioned towards a sense of entitlement; maybe that means being annoyed when the train is running late, or when the wrong food is delivered, or when you have to wait in line for soup at lunch. Everything is SO available to us. And it gives us a false sense of control.

I know that for me, my OCD has really flared up since being in New York despite the fact that I had it under control (for the first time in 9 years) just 8 months ago. Because there's so much for it to feed on, in a way.

And yet I've realized recently that I really feel different when I'm meditating daily. The ups and downs can be observed and detached from in a way, since there's an understanding that the highs and lows are proof of our existence. That doesn't make sense to the OCD part of my mind - the OCD part of my mind likes to associate emotions and feelings with things that I can control and thereby increase or decrease the prevalence of those behaviors to affect my happiness and well being. Last night, after I finished, it really struck me how this practice is the only thing that my OCD can't wrap it's tentacles around. Because there isn't quite anything to grasp, nothing concrete or measurable about it. It's just there. My mind yearns to attach numbers to everything, and yet my meditation practice is untouchable. I didn't realize it until last night, but that's the power of meditation to me, right here, right now. And I also realize that that won't always be how my practice serves me, because everything is fluid and always changing. So it's important (for me) to not get attached to a certain set of benefits because then I limit future possibilities.

And most importantly, I hope that meditation will help me become the best version of myself so that I can serve others with love and compassion.

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Dennis Hunter is a writer, yogi and meditation teacher living in New York City. He is the author of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are. He is a co-founder of Warrior Flow™ with his husband Adrian Molina.

The Power of Meditation: Voices of Students (Part Four)

Over the past several weeks I’ve been working with students in a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training and helping them develop a daily meditation practice. I asked each student to explain, in their own words, their personal motivation for meditating. I’m sharing one student’s response per day. To read the introduction to this series, click here.


STUDENT 4:  “Doing just one thing…”

The first benefit I’ve observed is that it allows you to give your mind some time to rest and recharge.  These days everyone is busy – in my case I attribute it to work, meetings, to-do lists, surviving in NYC and trying to squeeze a little time in here and there to catch up with friends and family.  But even my 60-something parents, retirees living in a Midwestern suburb, are perpetually busy (in a very Seinfeld-esque way).  Whenever I call they are wrapping up breakfast, heading to the library, walking the dog, going to the store, or doing something else that most would consider unimportant but keeps them busy nonetheless (and always seems to give them lots to talk about on the phone)!  Regardless of how we define “busy”, we need to find time to rest the physical body every so often by sleeping at night or even just taking a quick nap during the day. It would make sense that the same holds true for the mind – we need to rest it periodically in order to operate at peak performance.  However, when we are recharging physically (i.e. sleeping) our mind is often busy at work as evidenced by our dreams.  I often have very vivid dreams, waking up disoriented and/or stressed out from being so completely engaged in them, that I feel meditation is probably more restful to my mind than actual sleep!

The other key benefit I’ve observed from my meditation practice is that through meditation, you can work to improve your ability to focus.  Again with our society’s emphasis on multi-tasking, we rarely take time to do just one thing as that may be thought of as “inefficient” in some bizarre way.  That makes meditation practice difficult in that it takes a different type of concentration than we are used to, and forces us to actively try to clear a mind that has been conditioned to instead do as many things at once as humanly possible.  This act of meditation as “going against the grain” results in us often letting thoughts creep in at some point, which then allows us to be compassionate with ourselves, re-engage in our meditation, and once again accept and be thankful for where we are at this point in time, not analyzing the path we took to get here or what might/might not come to be in the future.

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Dennis Hunter is a writer, yogi and meditation teacher living in New York City. He is the author of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are. He is a co-founder of Warrior Flow™ with his husband Adrian Molina.

The Power of Meditation: Voices of Students (Part Three)

Over the past several weeks I’ve been working with students in a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training and helping them develop a daily meditation practice. I asked each student to explain, in their own words, their personal motivation for meditating. I’m sharing one student’s response per day. To read the introduction to this series, click here.


STUDENT 3:  “A chance to sit with God and just be still…”

Meditation is calming the busy-ness of our minds. It’s rooting ourselves. It’s finding a time each day to recognize how small we are and how large the universe is. It’s remembering to be humble and reminding ourselves that we are not the centers of the universe, but rather part of everything in the universe. When we meditate, we clear the jungles of our minds and make room for peace and wisdom and insight.

Meditation is hard. It is a practice and a discipline. Sometimes sitting with our own minds makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes the easiest thing to do would be to run away. The beauty of meditation, however, is in its consistency. The more one meditates, the more peace and calm he or she will find. The paradox is that often when our lives seem most turbulent, when we most need meditation, we tend to run away from it. That is where the practice comes in. It must be consistent. It must be a ritual.

As a practicing Catholic, I also believe meditation is a practice that transcends religious affiliation. If one believes in a higher divinity in the way that I do, meditation only serves to compliment and enhance his/her beliefs. Meditation provides me with a chance to sit with God and just be still. I believe others might have a similar experience sitting with whatever power they believe in. I believe we can do this together, no matter what we believe or don’t believe. 

Though I have dabbled with meditation in the past, this is the first time I have made a more consistent, solid effort to develop a practice. I almost find myself too much of a neophyte to really be able to describe meditation at all, yet here I am offering my humble thoughts. I am sure that my own definition of meditation will continually transform as my practice continues to develop. I am excited to see how my own definition of meditation will change.

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Dennis Hunter is a writer, yogi and meditation teacher living in New York City. He is the author of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are. He is a co-founder of Warrior Flow™ with his husband Adrian Molina.

The Power of Meditation: Voices of Students (Part Two)

Over the past several weeks I’ve been working with students in a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training and helping them develop a daily meditation practice. I asked each student to explain, in their own words, their personal motivation for meditating. I’m sharing one student’s response per day. To read the introduction to this series, click here.


STUDENT 2:  “I thought it would be easy…”

Why Meditate?

Because it’s hard. Because I know if my mind was at the place I want it to be, it wouldn’t be this hard. For me, meditation has so far been about quieting my mind to a place where meditation is no longer so difficult.

I thought it would be easy for me. I was wrong.

I don’t know if the path of awakening has a definitive end point, but I’ll know I’ve come a lot closer when the thought of sitting quietly by myself for 10 minutes no longer terrifies me.

It was never supposed to be this hard. But, then again, I guess I never knew I needed it this much.

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Dennis Hunter is a writer, yogi and meditation teacher living in New York City. He is the author of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are. He is a co-founder of Warrior Flow™ with his husband Adrian Molina.

The Power of Meditation: Voices of Students (Part One)

I teach many groups of meditation students but they’re usually drop-in classes. People come and go, and there’s often not a lot of interaction outside of class. It’s hard to know whether they are practicing at all in their daily lives, and even harder to gauge the effects that meditation might be having outside the classroom or yoga studio.

I’m currently teaching meditation in a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training, which is quite a different experience. Developing a daily meditation practice has been part of the students’ homework. With guided meditations during our group sessions, assigned readings from my book You Are Buddha, regular check-ins, and a short writing assignment, it has been amazing to see how meditation is opening the trainees’ hearts and minds.

Often, students who come to a Yoga Teacher Training already have a strong physical practice of yoga, but they might have little or no previous experience with meditation. Meditating in a sustained way for several weeks, for as little as 10 minutes a day, has been a life-altering experience for many of them.

One of the major themes that has emerged clearly is how meditation puts us in touch with our vulnerability, our soft spot, what Chogyam Trungpa called the “genuine heart of sadness.” It’s the source of our innate tenderness and compassion, which normally lies hidden and shielded beneath the tough, carefully crafted persona we project to the outside world. Meditation slowly peels away our outer shield and leaves us feeling more exposed but more honest about who we really are.

One student after another has approached me during the past several weeks to share that they have found themselves crying during or after meditation. Sometimes just talking about this experience brings them to tears while we’re talking. Each time, they look at me with surprise and a smile when I tell them: “That’s fantastic.” “You’re doing really great.” Through meditation, they are getting in touch with something that wants to be seen, wants to be felt — something that might have been stuck for years in the shadows, waiting for its chance to be acknowledged.

Truthfulness in Yoga and Buddhism

This is part one in a series of articles examining key principles of Yoga and Buddhism.

Today many people in the West approach Yoga primarily as a physical practice for training the body, and meditation as a tool for subduing the mind's noise and cultivating peace. These are fine goals in themselves, but they really only begin to scratch the surface.

Looking at Yoga and meditation in this way is sort of like looking at the small tip of an iceberg that sits above the surface of the water and believing you’ve seen the whole iceberg. There is so much more hidden down below — in fact, you may be missing about 95% of the iceberg.

In a gym Yoga class or in a contemporary mindfulness seminar, you’re not likely to hear the teacher speak much about morality and ethics. But that’s actually where both of these paths begin.

In Buddhism (which is the source of most contemporary meditation and mindfulness techniques), meditation is actually the second of three areas of training: Shila (Ethical Conduct), Samadhi (Meditation), and Prajña (Insight or Wisdom). Without the foundation of following certain ethical principles, it’s difficult or impossible to cultivate the higher states of meditation and insight that lead to spiritual freedom and awakening.

In the classical Yoga tradition, the same is true. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras lay out an eightfold path called ashtanga, more commonly known as the eight limbs of Yoga (ashta = eight and anga = limb). The first limb of Patanjali’s Yoga is Yama, the ethical standards that a Yogi should follow. The physical asana practice is the third limb, and its intention is not only to care for the body but to cultivate the discipline and focus necessary to approach the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th limbs of Yoga, all of which are concerned with meditation and insight.

To put it simply, without ethics your life is a mess — and you are haunted by the mess. You harm yourself and others with your thoughts, words and actions, and the consequences of this behavior torment your mind and body. The apple is rotten from the inside, and no amount of polishing its surface with asana practice or meditation is going to make it edible. The ethical precepts in Buddhism and Yoga restore the apple to a wholesome state, from the inside out.

The ethical principles from each tradition are largely the same. I’ll focus here on just one of them: Truthfulness.

Paper Bags

A birthday poem written by the old bag labeled Dennis Hunter.

This being human is a paper shopping bag.
Inside the bag is a parcel we carry from womb to tomb.
Most of our lives are spent staring at the bag,
identifying with the label it represents: “me.”
We build our lives around a brand, a fiction,
proudly sporting it through the world
and comparing it to other people’s brands.
We all want to have the best brand, to be seen
carrying the shopping bag with the finest label.
We have forgotten the purpose of a shopping bag,
and confused the bag and the brand with what's inside.
Stop for a moment, dissociate yourself from this bag of bones
and all the labels and brands it represents, and look inside.
Try to remember why you picked up a shopping bag
in the first place, and what it contains.
It’s raining now, and your paper bag is wet.
Already its fibers are weakening; soon it will break
and spill its contents into the street.
Don’t wait until then to open the parcel and see what's inside.
Open it now!
You’ve forgotten you ever went shopping in the first place,
and here you are, crying out against the rain,
holding a disintegrating bag from the great Store.

But this is where the metaphor breaks down…

The parcel in your bag is not something you bought,
for you cannot acquire or own what you are.
The parcel is you, and you never left the Store with it.
You only carried it around for a little while
in a shopping bag made of space, time and flesh,
from one part of the Store to another:
this laughable parade of paper bags and colorful logos.
You can neither purchase nor shoplift yourself.
Nothing ever leaves the Store, but everything returns to it.
Remember this, and be free from the illusion
of imprisonment inside a crumbling bag of bones, skin and personality.
Forget your brand, remember this, and embrace the deathless state.
The great Store, and everything in it, is you.

Finding Your True Spiritual Path

There is no one-size-fits-all spiritual path; for each of us, it is an individual and personal journey. Join Dennis Hunter for an intimate exploration of what it means to be on the spiritual path today, the thorny relationship between spirituality and religion, and how to navigate towards the teachings that are most meaningful and transformative for you. Streaming audio: 33 minutes.

To download an MP3 file of this talk and other recordings by Dennis Hunter, search iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, CDBaby, and other major audio retailers. See the Audio page for links.

Forgiveness: The F Word (Streaming Audio)

Forgiveness is fundamental to our well-being and our spiritual growth, and is central to the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, and other spiritual figures. So why do we so often forget (or refuse) to put it into practice?

At this time of year we hear a lot of Hallmark card rhetoric about peace on Earth and goodwill towards men. But that very peace and goodwill begins in your own heart, and it expands outward from there. Forgive those who have trespassed against you, just as you would wish to be forgiven for your trespasses. Forgiveness and compassion are the prerequisites to peace on earth. Start where you are. Who can you forgive right now, in this very moment? And how would that change your experience of the world? Holy child, what in the hell are you waiting for? Be the change you want to see in the world.

Join Dennis Hunter for a free 37-minute satsang (dharma talk) exploring the stickiness of resentments, the freedom of letting go, and the vital role of forgiveness in spiritual awakening. Adapted from material presented in Chapter 13 of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are.

Recorded on Christmas Eve, 2014.

Skiing, Meditation, Yoga, and Sex

Skiing, Meditation, Yoga and Sex. What do these four things have in common? They each get better in direct proportion to the degree to which you relax. Sure, you need to learn certain skills, and you have to practice. You need a good instructor when you're learning, and whatever equipment is involved needs to fit comfortably and make you feel supported and safe. But at some point, after you've gained a certain level of proficiency and ease with the practice, it's no longer about the equipment or the techniques or the instructions. It's about you, your body and mind, and your world. Your willingness and dedication to show up and keep facing your fears and obstacles, your failures as well as your bliss and triumphs. Whether it's skiing or yoga or meditation or sex, you will experience all of these highs and lows, sometimes all within the space of a few minutes. 

But what's the difference between a miserable run of terror down the mountainside, and one that brings bliss, joy and a heightened sense of aliveness and embodiment and connection to your world and your life? It's your state of mind while you are on the mountain. Your presence, your mindfulness and awareness, your open eyes and open heart, and the magic ingredient: relaxation. If you don't relax, you will be terrorized by the experience. And at some point the practice will ask you (no, it will demand of you) that you step outside your comfort zone, into your fears. That's as true of yoga or meditation or sex as it is of skiing. Is there anything in life of which it isn't true? 

A Tibetan meditation master once said, "Little relaxation, little meditation. Middling relaxation, middling meditation. Great relaxation, great meditation." All the techniques and props and rituals and instructions are really there as guides to help us get to the point where we can finally just let go, drop our resistance and relax into the present moment. And when we relax, we might be surprised to find how much bliss there is to be experienced right here in the present moment, even on the mountainside that formerly provoked our fears and resistance. We may learn that we are capable of things we never imagined. 

Right there, through relaxation, we discover our human capacity to transform neurosis and resistance into clarity and joy. Mind and body are synchronized, we become intimately attuned to the elements of the phenomenal world and our relationship to it and to the other beings moving through it alongside us. We can experience this on the mountainside, on the yoga mat, on the meditation cushion, or...well, other places. 

We show up, we train, we learn, we practice, we succeed and fail, we keep practicing, and then at some point the magic happens: we relax. And when we relax, we open to a deeper dimension of our human experience. 

Photo by Susie Schein