Our simple practice helps us release the unhelpful preoccupations that creep into our minds as we sit quietly and observe our thoughts. Releasing these, I find I have less need for quick “hits” of distraction, like the news. What would it be like to spend more time absorbed in the awe of existence, rather than…
Life for me right now is good. I returned from two months of intensive practice in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. My health is OK. I even went to the gym yesterday. Yet stuff comes up. Not because of anything in particular. I’m sitting here typing this and I sense some uneasiness, some anxiety, perhaps a…
Now, while loving-kindness and compassion might sound like these grand ideas, they’re actually really practical meditation practices. When you put in the effort, they truly transform your heart. Think of it as a master gardener bringing dead soil back to life. These practices can do the same for parts of yourself you’ve neglected. In a…
Mindfulness allows us to live into all that cannot be solved. It’s also a gateway to equanimity, the peace of the present moment. The other day, I listened to a podcast of an interview with Frank Osteseki, who is a pioneer in end-of-life care, founding in 1987 the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice…
The American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön tells a story about meeting your edge- of a group of people climbing up a very steep mountain. Some made it to the top, and some, gripped by fear, had to stop halway up. She observes: Life is a journey of meeting your edge again and again. That’s where…
The comedy improv teacher Jimmy Carrane mentioned in a blog post that the Illinois State Lottery once had a slogan that went: You can’t win of you don’t play. Although I’m not endorsing gambling here, we can apply this slogan to how we practice mindfulness. If we approach our practice as a grim duty to…
The other day I came across a very short poem by the 11th century Japanese woman poet Izumi Shikibu, and it struck a chord: Although the windblows terribly here,the moonlight also leaksbetween the roof planksof this ruined house. the Israel-Hamas war I knew in my heart there was some meaning to the poem’s effect on…
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…
One of the most frequent misunderstandings I hear about meditation practice is it will turn us into non-judgemental zombies. It’s easy to see why one would think this, since mindfulness teaches us to pay attention to our direct experience non-judgmentally, well, then it would seem to follow that we will eventually lose the capacity or…
Lately, I’ve been dealing with a relative of monkey mind I am calling crabby mind. They may be far apart on the biologic tree of life, but they are kissing cousins on my meditation mat. I’ve turned into a real crab. No, I didn’t wake up one morning to discover I was a decapod crustacean…