Do you have a fear of missing out on a more spiritual experience doing a mountain of laundry, washing a sinkful of dishes, or raking leaves till kingdom come? The meditation teacher Karen Maezen Miller, in a piece published in Lion’s Roar, rightfully calls us on this thought, while describing how the domestic lives of
Mindfulness meditation is not just another way to fix what we feel might be broken in our lives. It really helps us be happy. Maybe you struggle with low moods, motivation, or existential malaise. Maybe you feel lonely, or bored. We all do. Mindfulness re-orients us; rather than striving to get rid of stress and
Yes, we are all in a mess, with suffering and despair everywhere-yet one lonely channel broadcasts the remarkable message that despite it all, everything is fine. In a web-series from a few years ago hosted by Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian Garry Shandling recalls telling a joke once to an audience of Buddhist monks, one of
Ram Dass encouraged us to embrace our foolish selves rather than try to fix them I heard the news as I was driving home from work this past Tuesday morning. Ram Dass was dead. Maybe I will remember this drive home like I still remember that bleak winter day in late November in
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
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 in one of her talks
Acknowledging the inevitable sorrows in our lives with mindfulness opens the heart to kindness and joy as a moral obligation. I recently read a passage from a book by the Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr which resonated deeply. He writes in Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi: Christianity is not
In these past few posts we have been looking at the practice of the Four Immeasurables – Love, Joy, Compassion and Equanimity, also known as the Four Divine Abodes. Essentially these are four wholesome emotions that we intentionally develop and cultivate. In the last four posts we practiced two of these emotions together — Love