With mindfulness we learn how to single-task, leading to focusing the mind, bringing clarity, ease and contentment in our lives. There is a Zen story and the power of focus told by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hahn about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping fast, and…
A complaint I sometimes hear from folks who are trying to be happy by practicing meditation is that meditation is just not working. Putting effort to change your mental state does sometimes lead to frustration. Gratefulness, however, is a wholesome mental state which changes everything. notice when you naturally feel…
The creator of a popular Mindfulness app was on Jimmy Fallon Live last Friday night talking about how boredom happens because we have lost the skill of paying attention, and that we are all distraction junkies. Andy Puddicombe guides Jimmy and the Tonight Show audience through a brief meditation that…
We suffer because we forget what we truly are. We take refuge to remember. We forget we are love and compassion; that we are hard-wired to feel and connect. We forget we are truly and profoundly good through and through. Yet we settle for less, much less. Tara Brach said…
The work of meditation is finding a home in the present moment and letting go of anything that tries to pull you away. The lychees didn’t fruit much this year. In fact, barely at all. I thought maybe it was something I said? Some freaky karma thing? Two years ago,…
why we meditate We meditate for lots of reasons: stress relief, maybe lower our blood pressure, feel less anxious, or just to feel better, physically and maybe existentially. But I think under all these is a deeper one, which the Buddha made the central message of his teaching: to be…
Just what sorts of insights do you get from meditation? Mindfulness meditation also goes by the moniker Vipassana, or insight meditation. When I mentioned this in our weekly classes some years ago, someone asked me well, just what sorts of insights do you get from meditating? the insights from meditation…
Meditation practice is about coming back to love and compassion, and celebrating the one who is doing it, AKA self-compassion. In one of Tara Brach’s online talks on self-compassion, she tells a story about the work of Dian Fossey with gorilla groups in Rwanda. Ms. Fossey was asked how her research…
The prominent mindfulness meditation teacher Jack Kornfield tells this story illustrating the freshness of what has been called beginner’s mind in one of his talks about a Western woman who ordained under Ajahn Chah in Thailand in the late 1970s. She spent 10 years living the simple and austere life…