Mindfulness Meditation · Perception
This week’s meditation session is led by Jon Aaron and the theme is Perception.
Photo by David De Armas Photography
Much of Buddhism is about deconstruction. The most important thing to deconstruct is the very notion of an eternal and permanent self, which Buddhism rejects. Rather than find a self, the Buddha discovered the five skandhas, or aggregates, that give people the perception of a self. These are form, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness. Perception in particular gives people the ability to recognize their experiences and label them.
Jon Aaron teaches meditation, Buddhist dharma, and is a Somatic Experience Practitioner® in New York City. He is well known as a teacher of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) as well as a trainer of new teachers of this seminal eight-week curriculum. Among his primary interests are the use of meditation and somatic work in healing trauma and working with individuals with chronic pain and grief. He has been teaching for the New York Police Department in an eight-hour intervention called Cultivating Mindfulness: expanding the capacity of mind and body to work with stress, anxiety, and trauma. He is a cofounder of the MBSR Teacher Collaborative of Greater New York and a founding member of the Global Mindfulness Collaborative, and is a long-time teacher at New York Insight Meditation Center. When the pandemic hit, along with his partner he cofounded Space2Meditate, an online community of meditators that is still going strong six days a week.
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