Shinzen Young

Science and Spiritual “Enlightenment”

Posted on February 26, 2013 | By Jeff Warren
In March of 2012, myself and twenty other “adept” meditators participated in an experiment to try to answer the question: what is the real resting state of the brain? Strange things happened. An exploration of one view of so-called "enlightenment."

The Anxiety of the Long-Distance Meditator

Posted on December 20, 2012 | By Jeff Warren
“Stream entry,” is a Buddhist term for initial enlightenment — a shift in perspective where the practitioners’ mind flips inside-out, and for a split-second recognizes its own inseparability from the rest of the natural world.

How Zen Masters Die

Posted on January 25, 2015 | By Jeff Warren | 5 minute read
Meditation and other contemplative practices seem to accelerate the aging-gracefully gradient. They are ways of thinning out in the prime of life - a kind of dying in the midst of the everyday. Then when death does come, there’s nothing to fear, for - as Bertrand Russel wrote - "the things we care for will continue."

Spiritual Oneness: The Literary Genre

Posted on February 16, 2014 | By Jeff Warren
This talk from the 2013 Science and Nonduality conference is about how books on spiritual "oneness" seem to work their magic on readers, and how they might do so more often and more effectively.

Core Skills of Meditation and Practice

Posted on March 3, 2020 | By Jeff Warren | 2 minute read
If a practice is important to us, if it’s deepening our engagement with the world, if it’s teaching us about who we are, then you can be sure many of these basic skills are present and probably increasing. Understanding the skills is central to being your own life teacher, and to sharing practice with others.