DYL: What Meditation Can Do for Any of Us

In this month's Design Your Life meetup, we will explore what it means to train attention and whether meditation can help us think more clearly and live more deliberately.

Geng Tran will open with a presentation on her recent experience at the Bodhisattva Nature Foundation, looking at how meditation is practiced there and whether it requires its metaphysical foundations. The broader question is what meditation can offer all of us, whatever we believe.

The Stoic tradition offers a parallel approach: the Meditations repeatedly return attention to what is and is not in our control. Peter Singer's dialogues with the Buddhist nun Shih Chao-Hwei raise a related ethical question: can loving-kindness practice do something that moral argument alone cannot?

Design Your Life focuses on moving from philosophy to practice, and meditation fits naturally into that approach. Are different approaches to meditation genuinely compatible, or do they only look similar in practice? Does meditation shape character? And if its effects are modest, what makes it worth the time?

Sources
Bodhisattva Nature Foundation: https://bodhinature.com
Secular Buddhist Network — Meditation: https://secularbuddhistnetwork.org/category/meditation/
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations
Peter Singer and Shih Chao-Hwei, The Buddhist and the Ethicist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5_YIUx5kNc
Calm Abiding (Shamatha) meditation instructions in painted form, Himalayan Art Resources: https://www.himalayanart.org/search/set.cfm?setID=2879
What the science says — NCCIH, 8 Things to Know About Meditation and Mindfulness: https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/tips/8-things-to-know-about-meditation-and-mindfulness