stillpoint

simple buddhist practice

a very simple loving-kindness meditation

awareness of breathing

the air that I breathe....

You can add these practices to Monday Metta or use for a few minutes at any time. Click on the links above.

New practices will be added regularly

Monday Metta

by Antoinette, Jane and Joelle

‘Every time one of us truly rests, the world rests a little, so intimately connected are we with one another.’ Dolores Leckey

The 'Monday metta' practice is what connects the Stillpoint virtual community.

We’re all living with chronic illness that fluctuates, so you never know if you'll be able to practice or not on any particular day. Monday metta is for everyone who is prevented by ill health from physically attending a meditation group, especially those who feel isolated.

Every Monday at no specific time, some of us are at some stage during the day dedicating our meditation to other Stillpoint users. Depending on our state of health at the time - it could take the form of anything from a meditation to just lighting a candle - we are in each other’s minds and hearts. We hope that it will be a comfort for everyone to know that they are not alone and that powerful loving light is being sent, bringing courage, strength and peace of mind. So if you're feeling isolated or low or just want to feel connected and feel up to sending and receiving love and positive thoughts, please join our virtual meditation group on Mondays.

Light a candle at any time on a Monday and know you are not alone

Whether or not we can meditate - even if we are lying in bed - we can send loving-kindness to ourselves, and to everyone in our community. “The spirit of metta is unconditional: open and unobstructed. Like water poured from one vessel to another, metta flows freely, taking the shape of each situation without changing its essence.” Sharon Salzberg. Loving-Kindness: the Revolutionary art of Happiness. Shambhala, 1995.

What is Metta?

The Pali word 'Metta' ('Maitri' in Sanskrit) is commonly translated in English as 'loving-kindness.' Metta signifies friendship and non-violence as well as "a strong wish for the happiness of others."  More on metta from Prairie Sangha

Read an outline of the loving kindness practice, as described by Jack Kornfeld: ‘With a loving heart as the background, all that we attempt, all that we encounter, will open and flow more easily. The power of loving-kindness… will calm your life and keep you connected to your heart.'

How it began:

Antoinette sent an email saying,

“I have been able to meditate a bit just lately I am going to dedicate every Monday session to everyone who uses Stillpoint. If I can't get to meditate I'll definitely be lighting a candle and saying prayers for everyone, wishing you courage, equanimity, faith and love. If anyone would like to join me it would be really good to know that someone else is doing the same thing.”

Update: Here is a very short practice you can add, as you light your candle

Please print this page off if you know someone who is bedbound /housebound without a computer, who would like to share our virtual meditation community.

Participants say:

“I have enjoyed 'doing' metta as a way to feel connected to everyone. It's lovely to know that you are being thought of, when you are going through a bad patch or feeling lonely.” Nicola, Northants

“Thank you for bringing people together, sharing makes us stronger.” Rosie, Edinburgh

“It feels much better knowing I am not meditating alone.” John, Essex

A very simple loving-kindness meditation

To start the practice, and at times when you feel you can only manage a little....perhaps as you light your candle, here is a simple loving-kindness meditation:

As you breathe in – cherish yourself


As you breathe out – cherish all beings

If you find it difficult to feel that you are cherishing yourself, just lay a hand gently on your heart region as you think or say these phrases. You can use them when you sit for dedicated times of meditation, but you can also use them as a 'post it note' practice. Maybe you'd like to write them and stick them up somewhere you can see them.

books: Working with Illness, Pain and Suffering

Full Catastrophe Living - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Review by Jane Harries

This book contains the course used in the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre for stress management and reduction. The people using it, whose case histories are included in the text, have very pressing physical or emotional problems, including chronic pain and frightening illnesses. The course leader and author is himself a Buddhist, but he teaches meditation and ‘mindfulness’ in a secular context.

The course involves using meditation, relaxation and yoga for an 8-week period, during which no goals are set, in order to release people from striving to achieve a result, just as they might do in their everyday lives. I liked this attitude; an achievement orientation can be a curse for those recovering from ME, though motivation is important.

I used this course and book in my own way - following the relaxation and meditation practises but not the yoga or ‘walking’ meditation. I found that it was very helpful in reorienting myself to ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’, creating a feeling of more space in my life to appreciate things. The relaxation exercise was helpful in increasing my sleep at night and properly relaxing during the day, which felt healing. The 8 weeks was just a start for me - this is a life’s work!

In addition to the course exercises there is a lot of useful material here on all kinds of stress - ‘people stress’, ‘time and time stress’, ‘world stress’, ‘working with physical pain’, ‘working with panic, fear and anxiety’. These provide useful fuel for your mind at bad moments, and the case histories mentioned are very encouraging. I’d recommend this book for anyone who wants to improve the quality of their life, including their health.

This book is increasingly used in clinical settings, for instance it is used with with ME/CFS outpatients at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford as part of treatment, in conjunction with meditation sessions. >> ISBN 0385303122, available (plus more reviews) from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk.

Beautiful Work - A Meditation On Pain - Sharon Cameron

Review by Carole Bruce

If I could think in prose as spare and lyrically precise as Sharon Cameron in her book Beautiful Work, I would feel I was using all the symptoms of ME as a prolonged meditation. She is not ill herself but sets out to explore pain. During three Buddhist retreats she observes her bodily sensations minutely. As she does her awareness grows - subtly changing “my” pain into “the” pain.

It’s spare, modern American writing - almost a prose poem at times - her own experience is interspersed with the voices of three persons now dead - along with comments from the meditation master. She sets out to free herself of suffering through an incredibly detailed observation of storyless sensation. At the end of the book her purpose is revealed. Her heart is wide as she sits with patients suffering chronic terminal pain.

I keep this book beside my bed - dipping into a few paragraphs grounds me into a wider perspective and a reason to re-evaluate the endless struggle we all share. As Stephen Levine says, “It’s the key that fits the lock - this is the possibility of living without pain turning into suffering, of freeing the body to heal in the heart.” (Hardcover 121 pages). >> ISBN 082232508X, available (plus more reviews) from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.

Learning to Fall - Philip Simmons

Review by Margaret Irish

This is a delightful, wise little book of essays by an academic and writer diagnosed at 35 with MND who explores many of the topics that concern us greatly within this group. In each essay he reflects in a gentle, witty way on aspects of every-day life in rural New Hampshire and draws a spiritual thread from such things as visits to the dump and mating toads, mud, insects and winds in the forest. This could get a bit much: I occasionally groaned, envying his relentlessly positive view; but most of the time, his honest, kindly, down-to-earth approach kept me with him.

He calls on a wide range of traditions, with some fascinating discussions of familiar stories from the Bible and elsewhere and quotes many writers including TS Eliot and a certain still point, just for us! Always he tries to root any insights into how one can really live them while getting on with a difficult daily existence. His condition is touched on only lightly and in passing (a pity?) but it clearly drives the book, with the spiritual content becoming more insistent as time goes on, and there are moments of great sadness. That said, he remains surprisingly capable despite growing weakness and indeed has survived much longer than most. so perhaps he has got the right idea somewhere.

If I have any regrets about the book it would be his omission of the topic of care and carers, about which he could have written so well. In otherwise admirable books like this it seems to be taken as read that adequate and appropriate care is necessarily available while the principal carer (if there is one) experiences no great burden or loss. Here there are just a few clues in the acknowledgements but it does not detract from the rest of the text.

The book comes adorned with praise from many luminaries, such as Jack Kornfield describing it as "...an act of grace". I would warmly recommend it as a brave and heartening way to look for the "rewards of an imperfect life", as the book is subtitled. >> ISBN 055338158X, available (plus more reviews) from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.

audio: Relaxation and Meditation music

The Tired Sounds of... - Stars of the Lid

Live recordings from 'The Path':

1. The Tibetan Singing Bowl Orchestra 2. Ani Choying Drolma

Music for Zen Meditation (and other joys)

Music for Zen Meditation (and other joys)

- Tony Scott++

This landmark album is a collaboration between the clarinetist Tony Scott and two Japanese musicians: koto player Shinichi Yuize and shakuhachi (bamboo flute) player Hozan Yamamoto. Based on the Zen concept of Beginner's Mind, a state of openness that leads to exploration, each track is a gentle improvisation with an emphasis on pauses and tranquility. Sublime. Audio clips and more reviews. Recorded in 1964 and reissued in 1997. >> £7.99 plus p&p from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.

Live recordings from 'The Path'

1. The Tibetan Singing Bowl Orchestra
2. Ani Choying Drolma

Reviewed together by Chris Dooks

UK only. I am sure it's a familiar story: being energetically challenged means you have to miss out on some great cultural events, breaking our exhausted hearts from time to time. However, limited relief for me was found recently regarding an audiovisual "happening" that was staged in the Scottish Highlands during May-June 2000. Relief comes in the form of two belatedly released CDs. …This cultural event, entitled "The Path” won awards and rave reviews. It was not very ME-friendly, basically being a two-mile "art-hike" up a hill in the middle of nowhere - in the dead of night. The project shuttled a "pack of townies" to the wild country on special buses in order for them to walk mindfully into the enhanced glen of light and sound.

A review from The Times put it like this: "As one crosses a wooden bridge to accept a Buddhist blessing... you are heading towards a summit that from a distance looks like a maypole, but is actually a makeshift temple, from which tentacles of worship flags hang. The descent is awash with candles, amplified chants and Tibetan singing bowls... with (visions of) stones that 'grow' - and pacts with local monsters.” It seemed to span Gaelic, Celtic, European and Tibetan influences and culture. What has been released from the show is Himalayan: two CDs of both Buddhist chanting and Tibetan singing bowl music. Together, they make a great double souvenir of the event; the works are also strong enough musical pieces in their own right. They both make for gently penetrating listening.

The Tibetan Singing Bowl Orchestra

A live (amplified) recording, all chimes and decaying tones. Two percussion masters, based in Kathmandu but performing in the Scottish glen, gently gong, pulse and tinkle low resonating bowl tones for the best part of an hour. This is on the CD as one long continuous track. Listening to this recording, it's clear that it's no precise studio session... Heard on headphones, it reveals the distant buzz of an amplifier and it comes across as a well-preserved document of this event. But that's to its advantage… The knowledge that you are listening to a performance gives it extra charge and pregnant expectation of the next gentle ripple of notes between the gaps - or gaps between the notes. It works really well as a gentle "night chimes" release - quiet metal bubbles and trickles of sound drifting off into the dark air - an ideal piece to listen to first thing on a morning or last thing at night. Beautiful.

Ani Choying Drolma

This CD is also entitled "Live Recordings From The Path" and is a more direct, but equally meditative release. The Tibetan nun sings alone on this piece, which is also one continuous track. This seemed at first to be slightly annoying as there are many different chants on this recording. But the intention seems to be to listen to it all in one sitting, for a dedicated period of time. The production is similar to the Tibetan Singing Bowl Orchestra's CD - a warm location-based recording, simply recorded. It seems to differ from the above release in that Ani's voice is washed slightly with what sounds like an artificial reverb or delay which I found made me feel cheated a little bit, although it does allow your brain to sink into the piece. The sleeve notes claim this reverb is natural and environmental and if it is, it is stunning - can it be true? it sounds like a cathedral! ..

There's a pivotal moment half way through on this gorgeous record, when you know what you are listening to simply occurred in one particular moment in time - a jet flies overhead and it gently soaks into the composition for almost a minute. It made me think of the view from the aircraft of the spectacle below and then from the point of view of below, to above. When I thought about this, I realised this was a kind of ‘sound of the sky’ on the recording which I felt was pertinent.

A great addition to this release would have been an English translation of the chants. Although the music is wonderful, relaxing and inspiring, and repetitive, we British folks sit soaking up music like this, often labelling it ‘spiritual’, without enquiry. But I believe that Ani is not singing a Sainsbury's shopping list here, and that it's highly likely it comes from a very authentic tradition. I just want to know what the words are...

In all, a fine couple of CDs, which are available as a special offer from the organisation that staged the event [see below]: £12 each or £20 for the pair of CDs. >> Available with a cheque (UK only) from nva organisation, 3rd floor, 128 Elderslie Street, Glasgow, G3 7AW tel: 0141 204 3304, email: [email protected].

The Tired Sounds of... - Stars of the Lid

Review - 'Melatonin melodies for exhaustives' - by Chris Dooks

The Stars Of The Lid are a Texan duo; their double CD The Tired Sounds of… is two hours of the most subtle drones that makes rich listening pleasure - but also is of particular interest to those of us who are medically exhausted by whatever cause. It could almost be a chronic fatigue syndrome commission. This music is like medicine. I have been playing it constantly since I discovered it in Amsterdam and it's amazingly gentle lullaby music - sourced, by the sound of it from string instruments and delicate field recordings.

The Tired sounds of… contains music that seems to grow from nothing, and if you paid listening attention at any particular point, there would be little more than a slow string loop present, but it's the sum of it's parts that effects. You notice after one of the "movements" on the CD that you've been somewhere, but it's when it's on its way out, or after the piece has played, that you feel the benefit. It's very 'centering' music this. It's emotional without being emotionally sapping.

Forget those relaxation compilations, or so-called chill out or ambient CDs. They are marketed by those who, well, forgive them Lord for they know not what they do. This avoids the clichés and it's right back to the source. >> Read more about the band, stream full-length tracks or download mp3s from the fabulous epitonic site. Also short samples of all tracks and reviews from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk.

audio: meditations, online and to purchase

 Wildmind has an excellent selection of meditation CDs and mp3 downloads to purchase.

Belief Net's Meditation page has several online audio meditations. Particularly recommended: Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace, which has a both calming meditation and a breathing exercise.

The Meditation Society of Australia offers a free online meditation course. Each of the ten lessons has instructions and an mp3 download, which runs for around 15 minutes. In the first lesson you imagine a candle flame as the doorway to peace and breathe in a golden, peaceful energy through your heart and release tension with the out breath.

audio: Guided meditaton/health-related

Body Scan - Breathworks: check the website for CDs and mp3 downloads. For example, a Body Scan meditation by Vidyamala whose soft and gentle voice guides your awareness through each part of the body in turn; you simply notice and accept whatever sensations are there (42 minutes) This approach, called mindfulness, can be a very powerful way of releasing pain and tension. The CD also includes a shorter version of the meditation, by Sona, so you can choose whichever you prefer