There is something unspeakably beautiful about mindful listening to the rain. Not just hearing the rain, but really listening. I love the way Thomas Merton describes mindful listening. One morning he awoke to the rain in the cool, pre-dawn hours in his monastery in rural Kentucky: What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone,…
According to later Buddhist thought, human beings are fundamentally good. This is not just a theory; it’s an unmistakable meditation insight. One could say that meditation is the practice of directly experiencing our essential goodness, our fundamentally healthy and happy mind. If we are fundamentally good, healthy and happy, then why don’t we feel this…
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…
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 can be done anywhere.” Holy…
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 I was tempted to launch…
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 of a nun in the…
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.”…
Have you ever had the experience of being irritated with someone or about something, like a parking ticket, while waking somewhere when suddenly you notice a gorgeous sunset is also happening? How long did it take you to let go of the “irritation voices” in your head to take in the sunset? Or maybe you…
The text we will be studying and contemplating for the next six months or so is perhaps the most highly regarded one in the entire Mahayana Mind Training tradition on Buddhist contemplation: The Root Text of the Seven Points of Mind Training, by the 12th century master of the Kadampa order, Geshe Chekawa Yeshe Dorje.…
Mindfulness gives us the skill of seeing our natural thought-mushrooming tendencies, and to gently wake up to the present moment of simply being with what is unfolding freshly, free of proliferation, fear, dread or unbalanced excitement and agitation.