Despite all that is wrong, I can still take delight in a moment of well-being. News stories are not the conversation starters they used to be. In the day, I could fill an awkward gap by saying “Guess what I heard on NPR this morning?” I don’t use that line anymore. These are intense times.
I feel that I should be above it all, but mostly I’m not. I struggle with my emotions. Practicing mindfulness of emotions helps a lot, but sometimes I am just plain sad or overcome by all that is untenable in the world, borrowing a line from Brother Steindl-Rast. I feel that I should be above
Just when I thought things couldn’t get more dreadful, they did. Yes, I know pandemics happen. Evolution hurts sometimes, I guess. Writing in the New York Times on September 23rd of this year, the epidemiologist and physician Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran observed Evolution can sometimes look like destruction to the untrained eye. We just passed 200,000
The suffering in the world is overwhelming, but the whole mess looks differently when we when know how to meditate every day. Everyone is frazzled. Shootings, politics, racial and economic disparities, climate catastrophies. That’s why it’s really important to learn how to meditate every day. This is not a post about learning to meditate in terms
With samadhi, our simple path of awareness reveals the wonderful secrets hidden in the depth of our being. Meditation has many wonders to reveal, but they remain hidden until we develop samadhi. Many insights into the nature of our existence lay waiting for the intrepid inner explorer. Many lost connections waiting to hook up again,
The Burmese meditation teacher Sayadaw U Tejaniya on how a meditator can practice mindfulness during the pandemic. His response was “practice as usual.” OK, really? His dry answers to the questions posed by the Western interviewer stewed in the back of my mind for a few days. Don’t practice to make something happen or for
When I do catch the mind moment, in mindful dishwashing, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty. A few folks have asked me if I am feeling any lingering effects from my recent Covid-19 illness. Not really; but I do I find mindful dish-washing in the kitchen sink to be much more fulfilling. I
Anything can happen at any time. This is called not knowing in Buddhism. And it’s precisley because anything can happen that we can also experience freedom from stress, grief, and burnout. It’s amazing to reflect how much we don’t know. And how consequential our open questions are. When, and how, will this pandemic end? How
I got it that while I talked Dharma, I wasn’t walking the path during this illness very well. OK, that post title is a bit of click-bait. But you’re here now. So let me explain how the 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen’s phrase is the title of this post. Some of you reading this
I love Buddhist humor. I especially love the way many Buddhist meditation masters find humorous ways to show us how uptight we can get. If you don’t have a sense of humor, you have no sense at all. I think of that menu and its message from time to time, as I struggle to keep