Weiyu Lin

A friend sent me a message, saying she wanted to meditate and did not know where to start. And when she tried to practice meditation by following some instructions online, she could not shake off the fear that she was doing it wrong. When I received her message, I felt like an imposter being asked for expert advice. Because in no way am I a regular meditator. And yet I felt that I did have things to share with her, perhaps precisely because I am a struggling meditator and by nature a nervous person but who yearns for a desired mental state. As a result of my habitual failures, I have devised many ways to motivate myself and began to re-define meditation in my own terms. I believe someone who is liable to fail could perhaps give better advice than someone who has an easy time doing something right.  This is my response: Hi YW, I feel flattered that you turn to me for this question. I myself am not a good meditator --I can tell you that -- but perhaps I have some ideas ...

Dear Michael, Thank you for the session yesterday. Since our session until now, I have become very aware of the tension that I have been creating unnecessarily in my body. This gaining in bodily awareness is exactly what I signed up for. And I have also been savoring the many observations and advice that you have given me. Perhaps I can summarize some takeaways, though I am not sure if I can get them correctly. 1. Use all the support you can. Have a situational awareness of what is supporting you (e.g. chair, floor, bed) and allow/adjust yourself so that you can be best supported by them, as much as possible. No need to help a chair. 2. Space, space, space!  Allow space to be born within your body -- behind your rib cage, between your two shoulders blades, from the neck to the ankle, and even behind the nose and within the jaw. Let the air and invisible qi circulate through you and impregnate you. 3. By dynamic and creative in the way you move, so that you can find the be...

Dear Michael, I am now in an italian café in Kerisdale and, while my memory is fresh, am jotting down what I have learned from our session today. In this session, I came to be aware of more bad habits of my postures and movements, and also make out some principles that underline good movements and learned some techniques for bringing about those movements according to different situations: Bad habits:  1. hands crossed on my belly which result in my heightened and forward shoulders, as well as a protruding abdomen 2. feet too close. As a result, the thumb areas have to support most of my body weight; and two feet seem to collapse inward. 3. I tend to distribute more weight on my right leg than left leg because my left leg is much weaker than my right due to my accident. 4. my feet are too close also when I lie down 6. my hip and head are too forward in relation to my ankles 7. when I try to assert a position that I think of as ideal, I pull my shoulders too backward. For ...

I wrote this post on September 11th, 12 days after my accident and the day on which I was discovered to have the blood clot. I had just returned from the hospital by myself on a wheelchair, having just being told this new terrible development. I felt bitter about it all:  Getting around on a wheelchair is hard, but it is the easiest part. It is even the fun part, getting pushed around and always having a place to sit. Having a blood clot is hard; positioning the leg vertically brings so much pain that I may just pass out. But I could handle it. I just need to find a way to pee while keeping my left leg horizontal. And to perform an injection on my stomach everyday. Money though, this is getting really hard. I am still expecting the remaining b ill that my insurance company cannot cover, which will crush me like a foot on an ant. But even this, I could find a way around. I just need to accept more works from more professors; in few months, I could clear the bill. But what i...

I was going to clean my room. This is my first day at the residence and I just bought all the cleaning gears on my way to the dorm. I could already see my residence just downhill. While inside my head, I was distracted by my ambition to get as many things done as possible on my first-day return on campus. That was when I did not realize I had hit a steep slope. Or rather, I had realized how steep it was, but this caution was only a pas sing thought, quickly replaced by a misplaced curiosity to know if a skateboard could handle such a slope. So when the skateboard slid over a ledge on the pavement, it was rocked out of balance completely while I reacted, in a mili-second, by jumping out of the board. Skateboard flew out and hit the ground swirling few circles. And I was in the mid-air: my leg, hip and ankle were stretched apart all in different directions while twisting in an impossible angle. Then I landed, first on my left foot then on my left knee. Three junctures i...

(Photos of Chimpu  Hermitage are far below) Samye is Tibet´s very first Buddhist monastery. It is surrounded by barren mountains and rolling sand dunes. The juxtaposition of desert and monastery gives out a wild and magical charm.  Look at the first picture, you will see that it is encircled in a wall. In fact, the entire place is an architectural manifestation of a mandala! In another word, it symbolizes the universe as Indians and Tibetans see it. The central Utse temple represents the sacred mountain Mt Meru, and the temples around it in two concentric circles represent the oceans and the continents that ring the mountain. Walking in Samye is a trip inside the Buddhist cosmology.  It is in Samye where the first seven Tibetan monks were ordained. It was also here Great Debate of Samye happened. The debate, which took place in early 790s, was essentially an argument between an Indian approach to Bodhisattvahood through textual study and scholarship, and the more im...