People often tell me that they really want to mediate but they’re too busy - there’s just not enough time. We all have a lot of things going on like jobs, school, families, and other responsibilities, so I frequently hear from clients and students...
We think of meditation as something that separates us from the world, that takes us, perhaps, to Vermont for a long weekend. Allowing feelings to simply be, to connect us with our humanness, gets at the basic sense of feeling worthy to be.
All of us experience states of mind that cause us to feel anxious, depressed, fearful, uncertain, insecure, envious, doubtful, impatient. These feelings can seem so powerful at times that we try to eradicate them as quickly as possible...
“What is drama and what is dharma? I guess you could say drama is illusion that acts like truth, and dharma is truth itself-the way things are, the basic state of reality that does not change from day to day according to fashion or our mood or...
In Turning the Mind into an Ally, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche describes the act of starting your meditation session with intention. He says it is, "like putting a rock on a leaf." It's really helpful for me to conjure this image whenever...
On this Mother’s Day, the woman who is sort of officially/unofficially my stepmother is standing guard over my father, making sure that he does not kill himself. In the past few weeks, my father has been in the hospital three times, the latest...
I noticed a manifestation of my meditation practice crawling across my leg in plain view as my practice was ending this morning. It was black—pitch-black. It was small—smaller than a
Week four, wow! How time flies when you're consuming responsibly. No paper cups were used this week. And... Hazzah, I've done it! I've opened an account with a federal credit union.
It’s not at all unusual to first come around to practice because none of the usual methods for dealing with life seem to work on a long-term basis; relationships have their ups and downs, jobs come and go, money comes in and money goes out,...
In Rebel Buddha Ponlop Rinpoche talks about “spiritual questions”, these questions that are always under the surface, questions that we may ignore, questions we will ask and answer alone. He says we will know we have found the answer when it has not...
Today is the spring equinox. It is also a day-off from school (thanks to official remembrance of the birthday of Benito Juarez), and today is also the day I am starting a 28 day meditation challenge.
Before I begin, I am taking...
Nature always knows precisely what to do. Winter turns to spring, the earth rotates, day comes and night falls, dogs bark and cats meow. But we humans are the only part of nature that stumble around because we aren’t completely sure...
Buddhism is founded on four facts about the nature of existence (the Four Noble Truths), the first fact being that everyone experiences suffering. There is "big" suffering (sickness, pain, and loss) and then there is "ordinary" suffering,...
As we come to the end of February and the end of the 28-Day Meditation Challenge I am thinking about techniques to keep the practice going and alive in our daily lives. As Sharon Salzberg writes in the final chapter Keeping the Practice Going...
