People buy Buddhist pendants/amulets for many reasons – good luck, good health, financial prosperity, protection, love, and many other reasons. Some people believe ardently in the power of Buddhist items and buy them to enjoy a better quality of life. Twenty years ago when I arrived in Thailand, I was in the northeast. I had … Read more
Native English Speaker – Writer, Author, Editor, Proofreader Greetings! I’m an American native English speaker living in Thailand (Phuket, Krabi, Bangkok, Thailand for the past twenty years as a “digital nomad” writer, book and thesis editor, SEO expert and web developer. Phuket Writing Services I am a writer at websites I own, and occasionally for … Read more
I love poetry, but I think it often comes out bland and tacky. I don’t like the rhyming scheme so much, but sometimes it adds to a poem. I try it here, feeling only a fraction creative this morning. I’ll try for another more heartfelt rendition soon. I’ve never written a Jhana poem before, but … Read more
My Experience with Kasinas As I was deciding how to go about my meditation practice, and what I would do and not do, I chose to eliminate the idea of Kasina meditation in favor of meditation on the feeling of the breath at the nose as my meditation object. Once I was able to reach … Read more
I realized recently that I’ve never written about the various nimittas that show up when a meditator has full concentration on the breath. My own common nimittas are tingling in my hands and sometimes bright round circles in the mind. I usually teach about these types and rarely mention other types of nimittas. So below … Read more
I’ve been working on my next book for the last couple of days. It’s a book about Jhana. Not the Buddhist Jhana. Not some other teacher’s idea of Jhana. There will be nothing in the book about Jhana apps or anything like that. The book is about the deep Jhanas I experienced with a very … Read more
I have been speaking to some of my students about the difficulty in reaching Jhana – the Visuddhimagga Jhanas – and I’ve been trying to figure out different ways to help people enter Jhana. Trying to figure out different ways to teach entering the Jhanas, using different words that might resonate with people better than … Read more
Meditation for Beginners – a 22 Day Course Published by Apornpradab Buasi. ©2011 Vern Lovic. All rights reserved. Republished with changes 2017, 2019. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Please visit the author’s website, Jhana8.com for more information on beginners and advanced … Read more