Phillip Moffitt (born 1946) is a vipassana (insight) meditation teacher, former publishing executive, author, and an instructor at Spirit Rock Meditation Center [1] in Woodacre, California.
Phillip Moffitt (born 1946) is a vipassana (insight) meditation teacher, former publishing executive, author, and an instructor at Spirit Rock Meditation Center [1] in Woodacre, California.
Moffitt attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville where in 1966 he helped found the Tennessee Intercollegiate State Legislature, an annual legislative session held by Tennessee college students. After graduating in 1971 with a M.S. in Economics, Moffitt co-founded 13-30 Corporation with Chris Whittle and served as editor-in-chief and president from 1974-1983. In 1979, 13-30 Corporation purchased Esquire magazine and Moffitt served as chief executive officer and editor-in-chief until 1987. [2]
Deciding to begin a period of personal exploration that included studying mindfulness meditation and Theravada Buddhism, he sold Esquire to Hearst Magazines and left the publishing enterprise he created. [3] In 2001, Moffitt was ordained to teach Vipassana meditation. [4] His teaching is influenced by Ajahn Sumedho and his teacher Ajahn Chah. [5] Moffitt is the founder of the Life Balance Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the study and practice of spiritual values in daily life. [6] He also founded the Marin Sangha in San Rafael, California, and from 1998 until 2007 he was a contributing editor for Yoga Journal . [7] Phillip is a member of the Guiding Teachers Council, and teaches regularly, at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California.
He was identified by Yoga Journal as one of the people who had "each, independently, discovered the benefits of merging mindfulness with asana", leading to "something we might call 'mindful yoga'." [8]
Emotional Chaos to Clarity: How to Live More Skillfully, Make Better Decisions, and Find Purpose in Life ISBN 1-59463-092-5
Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering ISBN 1-59486-353-9
The Power to Heal: Ancient Arts & Modern Medicine with Rick Smolan and Matthew Naythons ISBN 0-13-684549-5
Medicine’s Great Journey: One Hundred Years of Healing with Rick Smolan ISBN 0-8212-1987-1
Awakening through the Nine Bodies: Explorations in Consciousness for Mindfulness Meditation and Yoga Practitioners ISBN 1623171903
The Best Buddhist Writing, 2004, edited by Melvin McLeod ISBN 1-59030-189-7
The Best Buddhist Writing, 2009, edited by Melvin McLeod ISBN 1-59030-734-8
Will Yoga & Meditation Really Change My Life? Edited by Stephen Cope ISBN 1-58017-509-0
The Graywolf Annual Three: Essays, Memoirs & Reflections, Edited by Scott Walker ISBN 0-915308-88-6
Meditation is a practice of mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.
Buddhist meditation is the practice of meditation in Buddhism. The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhāvanā and jhāna/dhyāna.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the 'Stress Reduction Clinic' and the 'Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society' at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Buddhist teachers such as Philip Kapleau, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Seung Sahn, and a founding member of Cambridge Zen Center. His practice of hatha yoga, Vipassanā and appreciation of the teachings of Soto Zen and Advaita Vedanta led him to integrate their teachings with scientific findings. He teaches mindfulness, which he says can help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness. The stress reduction program created by Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), is offered by medical centers, hospitals, and health maintenance organizations, and is described in his book Full Catastrophe Living.
The Vipassanā movement, also called the Insight Meditation Movement and American Vipassana movement, refers to a branch of modern Burmese Theravāda Buddhism that promotes "bare insight" (sukha-Vipassana) to attain stream entry and preserve the Buddhist teachings, which gained widespread popularity since the 1950s, and to its western derivatives which have been popularised since the 1970s, giving rise to the more dhyana-oriented mindfulness movement.
Nani Bala Barua, better known as Dipa Ma, was an Indian meditation teacher of Theravada Buddhism and was of Barua descent. She was a prominent Buddhist master in Asia and also taught in the United States where she influenced the American branch of the Vipassana movement.
Jack Kornfield is an American writer and teacher in the Vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma. He has taught mindfulness meditation worldwide since 1974. In 1975, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, and subsequently in 1987, Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Kornfield has worked as a peacemaker and activist, organized teacher training, and led international gatherings of Buddhist teachers including the Dalai Lama.
Sati, literally "memory" or "retention", commonly translated as mindfulness, "to remember to observe," is an essential part of Buddhist practice. It has the related meanings of calling to mind the wholesome dhammas such as the four establishments of mindfulness, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven awakening-factors, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the attainment of insight, and the actual practice of maintaining a lucid awareness of the dhammas of bodily and mental phenomena, in order to counter the arising of unwholesome states, and to develop wholesome states. It is the first factor of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. "Correct" or "right" mindfulness is the seventh element of the Noble Eightfold Path.
Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu is an American Buddhist monk and author. Belonging to the Thai Forest Tradition, he studied for ten years under the forest master Ajahn Fuang Jotiko. Since 1993, he has served as abbot of the Metta Forest Monastery in San Diego County, California—the first monastery in the Thai Forest Tradition in the U.S.—which he cofounded with Ajahn Suwat Suvaco.
Sharon Salzberg is an author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts, with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Her emphasis is on vipassanā (insight) and mettā (loving-kindness) methods, and has been leading meditation retreats around the world for over three decades. All of these methods have their origins in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Her books include Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995), A Heart as Wide as the World (1999), Real Happiness - The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program (2010), which was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2011, and the follow-up Real Happiness at Work (2013). She runs a Metta Hour podcast, and contributes monthly to a column On Being.
Tara Brach is an American psychologist, author, and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She is a guiding teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C. (IMCW). Brach also teaches about Buddhist meditation at centers for meditation and yoga in the United States and Europe, including Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California; the Kripalu Center; and the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.
Gil Fronsdal is a Norwegian-born, American Buddhist teacher, writer and scholar based in Redwood City, California. He has been practicing Buddhism of the Sōtō Zen and Vipassanā sects since 1975, and is currently teaching the practice of Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area. Having been taught by the Vipassanā practitioner Jack Kornfield, Fronsdal is part of the Vipassanā teachers' collective at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He was ordained as a Sōtō Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and was a Theravāda monk in Burma in 1985. In 1995, he received Dharma transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center.
Larry Rosenberg is an American Buddhist teacher who founded the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1985. He is also a resident teacher there. Rosenberg was a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and Harvard Medical School. In addition to teaching at the Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, he is also a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.
In the oldest texts of Buddhism, dhyāna or jhāna is a component of the training of the mind (bhavana), commonly translated as meditation, to withdraw the mind from the automatic responses to sense-impressions, "burn up" the defilements, and leading to a "state of perfect equanimity and awareness (upekkhā-sati-parisuddhi)." Dhyāna may have been the core practice of pre-sectarian Buddhism, in combination with several related practices which together lead to perfected mindfulness and detachment.
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Anne Cushman is an American teacher of yoga as exercise and meditation, a writer on Mindful Yoga, and a novelist. Her novel Enlightenment for Idiots was named by Booklist as one of the top ten novels of 2008. Cushman has also been an editor for Yoga Journal and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. She directs mentoring programs and multi-year meditation training for yoga teachers at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, emphasizing the fusion of yoga and Buddhist meditation and highlighting their shared history and philosophy.
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Janice Gates was a teacher of yoga as exercise and mindful yoga, known for her emphasis on the power of yoginis, women in yoga and her work in yoga therapy.
Frank Jude Boccio is a teacher and one of the originators of mindful yoga. He is known both for his teaching in centres across America, and for his 2004 book Mindfulness Yoga: The Awakened Union of Breath, Body and Mind, which describes a practice that combines yoga as exercise and Buddhist meditational practice.
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