It’s been a year now since Trump was elected president. No matter what your party affiliation, or non-affiliation, this year-old administration has caused many to feel trepidation and uncertainty about the future. In his farewell address to the nation last year, Barack Obama said “at our core we will be OK.” Driving home from work…
Mindfulness allows us to intimately see a flower, or watch a sunset, or eat a mango, with nothing in between us and the experience. connection with life as it is Breath by breath we deepen our connection with life as it is. We are more present for the beauty and the challenges we encounter. We…
I would like to address a couple of misconceptions I often hear regarding meditation and one’s emotional life. The first is we meditate to either to get rid of negative emotions, such as anger, or to manufacture positive ones, such as joy. The second is meditation erases our emotions altogether, leaving us emotional flat-liners. nothing…
The lychees did not fruit much this year. In fact, barely at all. I thought maybe it was something I said. Some freaky karma thing. Two years ago, our family was excited to see the tiny new buds of incredibly young lychees, like a slow-breaking wave of green on the venerable tree in our backyard.…
why we meditate We meditate for lots of reasons: stress relief, maybe lower our blood pressure, feel less anxious, or just to feel better, physically and maybe existentially. But I think under all these is a deeper one, which the Buddha made the central message of his teaching: to be free from suffering in all…
As a leader and host of a mindfulness meditation group meeting weekly now for 19 years, I can tell you what you already know – people are wigging out. Writing recently about the inauguration on the Lion’s Roar site, Susan Piver says we suffer because we are continuously “biting the hook” of our habitual reactions,…
I read online somewhere that before they enter kindergarten kids are exposed to thousands of commercials. I remember when our son was just four he told me most emphatically “Daddy we need to buy that toothpaste — next time, tell Mommy.” Popular and social media mesmerize many with 24/7 slogans, sound bites and odd notions…
I was recently reading a very inspiring book by Mary O’Malley, the title of which I love: What is in the Way is the Way. In the bio blurp on inside back cover Mary writes that she “barely survived childhood.” The compact bio continues: “Throughout her youth, she experienced an ever-deepening descent into darkness, culminating…
I recently read a passage from a book by the Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr which resonated deeply. He writes in Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi: The ordinary dualistic mind is consumed by counting and measuring how moral I am or you are. It weighs everything up and down–mostly…
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…