My news feed can incline my mind toward fear, confusion and anger. But I can also re-frame my news feed to spark compassion for the suffering of others. The news. OMG, how to deal with the news? The horrors in Ukraine, and the suffering of forced migration are just one of multiple national and world
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
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
Our simple practice of sustaining mindful attention on the most ordinary happenings in our everyday life, can bring this feeling of really being alive. We meditate for many different reasons. Often, our original motivations morph as we move forward on this path. It’s juicy to reflect on why we keep this up. Maybe we
Mindfulness meditation leaves the self-help mindset in the dust by challenging the existence of the very thing we are setting out to improve, the self. In an article on the self-help movement in New York Magazine back in 2013, Kathryn Shultz observed she knows people who “wouldn’t so much as walk through the self-help section
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 it seems like the man
Meditation changes your brain. The you meditate, the more you respond to life from the place of calm, compassion, and awareness. I often hear folks, when in a conversation about how they wish to improve their lives, but are struggling, or when receiving feedback from others, lament “well, that just the way I am.”
The main work of equanimity meditation is a kind of radical, open and healing acceptance. We have come to the fourth of the four immeasurables: meditation on equanimity. It might be the most important of the four, as without it we can easily lose our balance or direction. Whereas the previous three meditations on love,
This is our true home. We must live here, for it is only there that we are fully alive, in the church of what’s happening now. Our son Kupai started Kindergarten last week. When I woke him up for school the other day I asked him how he had slept. He said that it was