The Zen teacher Sobun Katherine Thanas in a book which was published not long after she passed a few years ago, wrote: I have come to realize that our work is to love the world just as it is. The work she is talking about is our simple meditation practice. I took a peek at…
How do we live our life knowing that it’s temporary? We have this opportunity to live this life, and we don’t know for how long. And we don’t know what will happen next. I am guessing most who read this blog, like myself, would say nothing happens next. But let’s agree we don’t want to…
One of my favorite Zen stories goes like this: One day at a certain monastery in 10th century China, ceremonies delayed preparation of the noon meal, and when they were over, the cook took up his sickle and hurriedly gathered vegetables from the garden. In his haste, he lopped off part of a snake, and,…
Alice Walker has good advice for all of us who practice mindfulness meditation: Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. As a meditation teacher, I am happy when people describe feelings familiar from childhood resurfacing in meditation, such as waking up in the morning and feeling excited for no particular reason. Causeless excitement about being alive…
Tears well up as I type these words. I ask myself, can I let myself be mindfully undone by this pain and not shut down from it? A few days ago, President Zelensky addressed the UN Security Council via video link from Kiev. He ended his talk with a short video montage of still photos…
That Putin is digging into a hole he will not get out of, is a trigger for the Buddhist contemplation practitioner to re-frame this situation as a historic teachable moment. Last week I asked if we should be preoccupied with the war in Ukraine. I got several answers back from you, the most pithy being:…
I am ambivalent about mixing politics with spirituality, so I am trying to be very cautious here. But as the French sculptor Daniel Buren once wrote: Every act is political whether one is conscious of it or not. If our meditation practice is to be of any real value to us, it must shine a…
Although I try to not address too many political issues on this blog, for reasons I hope to make clear if you choose to read this post, the coup in Burma the morning of February 1 is worthy of some discussion. The current extraordinary interest in mindfulness, both as a systematic approach to meditation…
Tears just flowed from my face when I heard Amanda Gorman, at only 22 years old, stride up to the microphone in front of an anxious worldwide audience and recite her moving poem The Hill We Climb during the inauguration. I have wept often in my 64 years, and yesterday’s weeping is staying with me…
It is all too easy to feel the collective weight of the world these days. Often, when catching up on the latest headlines or sensing the general tension in the air, I feel a familiar tightening in my body—a quiet voice that mutters, here we go again. The modern news cycle can feel like a…