I recently completed an intensive, 30 day silent meditation retreat in California following a very strict Burmese Buddhist lineage, with formal sessions totaling sixteen and a half hours per day. Each day began at 4am with the gentle sound of a bell signaling the start of another day of meditation. Each day was another opportunity
This simple practice helps release unhelpful preoccupations that creep into your mind space as you sit quietly and observe your thoughts. As we release these unhelpful preoccupations, we find less craving for distraction hits like the news. What would it be like to spend more time absorbed in mystery and awe rather than in your
Meditation shows me my burdens were mostly imagined. But even imaginary ones can carry real emotional weight. 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:
As you set out on your meditation journey- avoid aggressive self-improvement. There isn’t anything to improve; the present moment is just fine as it is. 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
As we soak in the healing waters of the present moment, the chasms between sacred and mundane, bearable and unbearable, dissolve. 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?
The practice of present moment awareness shows us that whatever we are dealing with does not define us. Difficult stuff comes up, but it doesn’t diminish our well-being. Maybe right now as you are reading this, you feel a little overwhelmed, anxious or bored. There is well-being in this, too. Give this a try. Make
Progress happens when you don’t think about it. I was struck by a poem the other day while reading a new translation of the Therigatha, a small book of verse compiled in the beginning of the 6th century BC, by Buddhist nuns, chronicling their spiritual struggles and victories. It is also regarded as the earliest-known
Folks who meditate in order to feel better often find the opposite. Eventfully they see that it’s the letting go of the wanting of happiness, that actually brings it! I can begin to answer by sharing a haiku I recently found: Since my house burned downI now have a better viewof the rising moon. This
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,
We already have what we need – “your brain and your heart are your temples, and your philosophy, kindness.” It seems many of us get hooked by trying to get somewhere in our mindfulness meditation practice. We evaluate where we are now and feel there is some ultra-cool place, where meditation, if done correctly, will