The benefit to meditation is that we become more synchronized in body and mind and begin to relate to our world in a less distracted and more wakeful way.

It occurred to me that many folks here in the West may not really know much about the Buddhist tradition and what it has to say about redemption, salvation, or anything else for that matter.

I wanted to jump in and participate in the ongoing discussion of sleep, but what I came up with, after contemplating the whole topic for some time, was to look further into what it means to actually be awake.

In training ourselves through meditation, it is very practical to start with mindfulness practice to pull the mind in from a habitual state of distraction into a focused and clear state.