Someone once asked Suzuki Roshi, the pioneering Zen teacher from Japan who founded the Zen Center of San Francisco in 1969: “Roshi, what’s the most important thing?” and he answered: To find out what’s the most important thing. Byron Katie, who teaches a practice called self-inquiry, said that the world’s number one problem is confusion.…
I remember this cartoon I saw perhaps 20 years ago while waiting at a doctor’s office. A woman and a man are sitting together at a coffee shop in some urban setting. The man looks over and says: I’m sorry. I was so busy listening to myself talk I forgot what I was saying. That…
When asked the value of contemplative life, the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen said it allowed him to feel “an intimacy with all things.” Mindfulness allows us to see a flower, or watch a sunset, or eat a mango, with nothing in between us and the experience. When you are this intimate, you have gotten…
There’s a song that’s been banging around in my head for a couple of weeks. It was recorded in 1966 by Buffalo Springfield. The opening lyrics go something like this: There’s something happening here/ what it is ain’t exactly clear. Sandwiched between images of street protests, there is this refrain: I think it’s time we…
Our marvelous mindfulness is a kind of marinating in the present moment. Seemingly solid things, like squash or zucchini, with fixed boundaries, when placed in a marinade of olive oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, and garlic, and left alone for a while, the solid shapes slowly lose their fixed outlines. As we marinate in the…
When I first started meditating, I thought I knew why meditation is important. It helps reduce stress, improves sleep, and reduces negative emotions–all aspects of my life that really needed an overhaul. But it took a few years for me to realize that although I knew why meditation is important, I had no idea how…
… when the mind complains it does NOT want to meditate, says the Buddhist monk U Tejaniya I’m going to assume that you are like most of us who are into meditation–you struggle maintaining a regular practice, right; you might even ask when is the best time to meditate. The instructions are so very simple—be…
Are you familiar with the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons? One of my favorites is when Calvin trips and falls down a flight of stairs, landing on his rear and looking confused. Then he stands up and throws his arms up in the air like a performer taking a bow and says, Ta da! I love…
One of the trickiest aspects of mindfulness meditation is the whole thing about letting go of goals. It seems to make no sense at all to not have any goal for our meditation practice. I mean, if there weren’t any real benefits to this practice, sure, there would be no reason to continue this odd…
Buddhist practice is not so much about answering the so-called big questions of life and death, but rather about dissolving the angst around the questions themselves. mindfulness is about appreciating the present moment Sure, when you try out something new, you have some expectations of what it will do for you. But meditation is really…