Some days I listen to ’60s jazz while doing the dishes. The other morning Spotify, for reasons I still cannot explain, served up Peggy Lee singing Is That All There Is? I stood there with a soapy plate in my hand thinking, “Yes, Peggy. Some mornings it does feel that way.” Most of us come…
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…
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…
Mindfulness is a kind of marinating in the present moment. Squash and zucchini look solid enough, with their fixed edges, until you set them in a marinade of olive oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, and garlic and leave them alone for a while. The edges soften. The shape stops being quite so certain. We marinate…
When I first started meditating, I thought I knew why meditation mattered. It reduced stress, improved sleep, softened negative emotions—all the parts of my life that badly needed an overhaul. It took a few years to learn that although I understood why meditation mattered, I had no idea how it mattered. I discovered that my…
… when the mind complains it does not want to meditate, says the Buddhist monk U Tejaniya. I am going to assume you are like most of us who take up meditation — you struggle to maintain a regular practice. You may even wonder when the best time to meditate really is. The instructions are…
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…
We live in uncertain times. Putin’s recent cold threat of a nuclear strike against Ukraine, and the real possibility of our mutual assured destruction, escalates our unease. How do we live with such insecurity? This is really the same question we looked at in a post two weeks ago. In light of the radical teachings…