Weiyu Lin

I am working as the Teaching Assistant for the Tibetan Buddhism course and next weekend, a midterm paper will be due. I felt very sympathetic with the students and wanted to help, so I wrote some advice that I hope could be helpful:  Dear students,  The weekend just began and I hope so has your preparation for writing the mid-term paper. In this announcement, I want to give a few advice that, I hope, can make this assignment less intimidating:   Help yourself to the writing guidebooks (Personally, I like to read parts of a writing guide just before starting to write; reading about writing reminds me of the fun and the challenges that I am about to have).  Most guides can only help you with the technical aspects of the writing (style, grammar, structure, etc). And it really depends on you to create your own "writing ritual". What do I mean by "writing ritual"? I will mention my own— not to say that mine is the model to follow (by no means!) but to...

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 ...