Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Category: basic mindfulness

7 rough spots on the meditative path
A lot of us hit a wall with meditation after that initial exciting phase, even though we know it’s good for us.
What makes it so hard to stick with a simple meditation we do every day? What gets in our way, and how can we make meditation a regular part of our lives?
The instructions are so simple: relax and just be aware of what is happening in the present moment. And yet we find this challenging and humbling.
Even for people who have been meditating for over forty years, like yours truly, daily practice is not always a cakewalk.
Here are seven common rough spots, and how to move past them
Even seasoned meditators face these common challenges. They might not hit all at once, but they’re definitely part of the journey.
1. I’m too busy, I don’t have the time!
I get this a lot, and I confess I deal with this, too.
For folks juggling parenthood and jobs, it’s totally valid. But let’s be real: we’re talking about we’re talking about 10 minutes a day here to get started. A lot of us spend way more time than that just scrolling through our phones or browsing online without much purpose.
2. I can’t get comfortable.
If you are trying to sit cross-legged on the floor then, yes, it will most definitely get uncomfortable. But don’t worry, you’ve got options! You can try meditating while standing, lying down, or even just sitting upright in a firm chair. Plus, walking meditation is awesome.
3. My mind won’t stop thinking.
Ever feel like your brain just won’t quit? Trying to silence your thoughts is like trying to stop the wind – it’s not going to happen. There is even a reference in the Buddhist suttas describing the mind as a “drunken monkey bitten by a scorpion,” always jumping from one thought to the next.
You say you become hyper aware of all that mental muttering? This is just background noise and is totally normal. Someone estimated that during a 20 minute period of meditation a beginner can experience around 300 thoughts!
After years of stress and overthinking, our minds crave stimulation, not quiet. It’s not as if you can suddenly turn off your thoughts when you meditate, it just means you are like everyone else.
4. There’s too much noise.
Our world is full of sounds. We just don’t have to let them dictate our meditation. Cars going by outside? Fine. Let them go by, just don’t jump in and go for a ride.
Real quiet isn’t about what’s around you. The more you meditate, the calmer and happier your mind gets, no matter what’s going on outside.
5. I don’t see the benefit.
Consistent meditation has a ton of proven benefits, but they take a bit to show up. Some folks feel them quickly, but most of us need to stick with it daily for a few weeks.
Just trust the process and keep at it. Think of it like learning an instrument – getting good takes time.
6. I’m no good at this.
It’s almost impossible to fail at meditation. Of course, you could intentionally try to balance your checkbook in your head when the bell sounds. But let’s say you put in your best effort. You sit for 20 minutes thinking non-stop meaningless thoughts, that’s fine.
There’s no right or wrong, and there’s no special technique. Meditation is surprisingly forgiving. You don’t need a clear mind; racing thoughts are normal. There are no strict rules or complicated steps—just find what works and stick with it.
7. Do I force myself to meditate when I don’t want to?
Not good. Meditation is not about forcing the mind to be still. It’s more about letting go of resistance to whatever may arise: doubt, worry, uncertainty, feeling inadequate, the endless dramas, fear, and desire.
Every time your mind drifts into daydreaming, simply and gently, lovingly even, just come back to now, come back to this moment.
All you need to do is pay attention and be with what is.
Nothing else.
As Frank Clark observes:
If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
With maturing practice, we can appreciate all obstacles as grist for the mill for deepening insight and freedom.
Resting in the essential mystery of what is, with no expectations, no overlays, an uncanny wonder and amazement reveal themselves if you are patient.
07/17/2025
sit quietly and observe your thoughts
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 need for distraction hits like the news. What would it be like to spend more time absorbed in mystery and awe rather than in your to-do list or newsfeed?
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Lin Yutang
With our mindfulness practice we breathe, eat and wash in mystery and awe in every moment. Thomas Merton observed in his 1968 collection of his journals The Other Side of the Mountain how eliminating non-essentials, as Lin Yutang mentions above, is the heart of his monastic vocation:
I just need to have long periods of no talking and no special thinking, and immediate contact with the sun, the grass, the dirt, the leaves. Undistracted by statements, jokes, opinions, news.
Thomas Merton
Sure, obstacles will arise. It really wouldn’t work otherwise. Frank Clark observes:
If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
With maturing practice, we can appreciate all obstacles as “grist for the mill” for this organic process of deepening insight and freedom.
The Buddha was on point here in the Dhammapada:
Let go of that which is in front,
let go of that which has already gone,
and let go of in-between.
With a heart that takes hold nowhere
you arrive at the place beyond all suffering.
We all experience difficulties, confusion and unhappiness. And even when things are hunky-dory, we sometimes worry if something ominous is just around the bend.
Yet our practice shows us glimpses of a fundamental OK-ness, a limitless essential freedom that is our birthright. So we go up and down between appreciating life as both a great mystery and a great misery, until the mind eventually settles down.
observe your thoughts
Mindfulness teaches us to pay attention and observe your thoughts in a way that doesn’t get sucked into whatever storms may arise in the mind, and let them pass, and rest in the settled mind of knowing you are aware.
As we familiarize ourselves with this heart of awareness, we see that whatever blocks the heart is mostly self-constructed- and insubstantial.
The twelfth-century Sufi philosopher El-Ghazali observed:
If you can lose it in a shipwreck, it isn’t yours.
As we rest for a moment, simply present, awake and aware, with no agenda at all, we step out of our habitual comfort zones of control, manipulation, into a space of natural open awareness.
We can’t lose this in any shipwreck.
I love the line by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke:
Ultimately, it is upon your vulnerability that you depend.
As you sit quietly and observe your thoughts, you open little by little into the warmth and tenderness of our own essential vulnerability, our own heart of awareness, that we all need so much these days.
07/18/2024
meeting your edge
The mind throws up resistance to the process of liberation- but we can metabolize this, allowing deep change and a graceful opening into a timeless presence.
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 you’re challenged and ask yourself questions like, “Now, why am I so scared? What is it I don’t want to see? Why can’t I go any further than this?”
Meeting your edge can happen in different places. The people who got to the top were not special, maybe they were just not afraid of heights. The ones gripped by fear met their edge sooner and got their lessons earlier.
Everybody meets their own edge on this path. The late Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa taught that the essence of a mature and transformative practice is to “meeting your edge and softening.”
Our meditation practice asks the same question a seasoned therapist would ask:
What am I avoiding? What am I afraid of?
The mind can throw up very interesting resistance to the process of liberation and purification. This resistance has to be metabolized before deep change can occur.
This is precisely what our mindfulness meditation does.
Then meeting your edge can be a graceful opening into a t im eless presence.
Last year a sangha member gave me a very inspiring book by Mary O’Malley, the title of which I love: What Is In The Way Is The Way. In her bio on the back cover Mary writes that she “barely survived childhood.”
Her bio chronicles her “descent into darkness.” After several suicide attempts, she had a “life-changing realization in which she saw through the games of the struggling mind and experienced a full connection with life which is the foundation of her work.”
There is one line which truly spoke to me, perfectly describing this kind of graceful opening:
When we dissolve our cloud banks of struggle through mindfulness and heartfulness, we can see, hear, taste, touch and smell the exquisite sacredness of all of life.
How does this look in practice?
We’re going along and everything is fine, but then we reach an edge of what we feel comfortable with. It might be a fear of physical pain or unpleasant emotions.
It can be a fear of change and insecurity; or it may be fear of the unknown.
Our meditation gently takes us to our edge and invites us to open and soften.
We don’t just do this once; we do this many times a day, metabolizing our resistance to what is bit by bit.
In the ancient Buddhist texts, the Buddha would often talk to people suffering from a grave illness. The descriptions they use for their symptoms are sometimes very graphic.
The Buddha then would ask them something like:
Even though your body is experiencing all these painful feelings, can your mind be at peace?
This is a possibility for us, but it takes training and time.
As mindfulness metabolizes our fear and resistance, we see unhappiness as optional, a habit we no longer need–the emotional analog of an appendix.
This frees us to love the life that is right here and right now. Sure, it takes training and time- but, oh, what a bargain!
06/03/2024
Buddhist insight in our day to day life
We can experience deep Buddhist insight by examining our present moment experience of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking.
This mind of our is pretty amazing. Our cognitive power propels us to the top of the food chain on this planet, and maybe even on others as we plan the colonization of Mars.
But the mind can also make us feel miserable, stressed and confused.
Our cat Piko doesn’t seem concerned at all about what might happen tomorrow. He appears oblivious to metaphysical or philosophical concerns or anxieties.
He’s definitely got a leg up on me here.
Whenever Piko feels an emotion, it seems to arise and fade naturally, like a cloud passing in the sky. He might carry a grudge briefly; but I doubt he feels guilt or blame the way we do.
His kin don’t look the type to carry a grudge around for centuries
Looks like he’s got two legs up on all of us.
The Buddha taught that everything we need to free ourselves from all emotional or philosophical anxieties is available right here and right now just by noticing how we experience the world.
We can experience deep Buddhist insight simply by examining our present moment experience of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking.
We may notice chains of discursive thinking arising out of nowhere, about anything.
While sitting quietly we may hear a bird and within a second we are worrying we haven’t heard as many birds as we used to in the mornings and become enthralled in a climate change revenge fantasy.
The meditation teacher Shaila Catherine recounts a student described what she observed in her thoughts and feelings the day she lost a hair clip:
She knew she had to go buy a new one and felt annoyed that she had to make a special trip to the store that day. Thoughts arose how could she lose it?
Now she has to spend more money. Her job is not paying well. Thoughts drifted to never having enough money and fear she will never have enough.
Feelings of failure and self-criticism are amplified. She decides she had better get a new job. But doubt arises: what else can she do for work?
All this arose from a simple thought about losing a hair clip.
This may seem like a trivial example. But, heck, I admit my days are peppered with anxieties which are as benign as those brought about by losing a hair clip, and which, if not experienced with some mindfulness, morph into self-recrimination, and anguish.
Even after forty years of meditation, I catch my mind running around on a mental hamster wheel trying to figure out some vital issue, which, after a mindful pause and some reflection, turns out to be on the same order as losing a hair clip.
We can experience deep Buddhist insight in our daily life
We can explore the feelings that lie underneath the issues we go on and on about in meditation. We can bring these feelings to therapy sessions and learn about how our past influences our life today.
Or perhaps the absurdity of what we are going on about gives us a good laugh.
Simple reminders can help- we can remind ourselves to just pause for a moment. Take a breath. Interrupt the flow of that restless thinking.
We can employ the Buddhist insight technique of labeling your daily life experiences- recognize that “this is what restlessness feels like” or “this is worry.” If we put the time into practice, we move our baseline capacity for this kind of self-reflection.
Our lives become more livable. Love visits more often. And we are here for it all with care and compassion.
04/14/2024
the essence of mindfulness practice
What a marvel, what a special thing it is to be conscious, to be aware, and to know that we’re aware- this is the essence of mindfulness practice.
The other day I read this haiku by the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa. It stopped my distracted mind in its tracks.
What a strange thing!
To be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.
What a marvel, what a special thing it is to be conscious, to be aware, and to know that we’re aware. We’re not here for that long, really, and I keep thinking I need to use my time well.
the essence of mindfulness practice
But simply being aware is not enough, it’s the knowing of being aware that’s so special. This is the essence of our mindfulness practice.
When we settle into this twin marvel of being aware and knowing we are aware we also discover another set of twin marvels: profound peace and freedom.
seetling into being aware
Settling into being aware doesn’t depend on anything being a certain way. We can settle into being aware of a grumpy mood, a stubbed toe or a fragrant cup of green tea.
The settling part of settling into being aware suggests our distracted mind is sitting in the back seat, for the moment anyway.
stepping out of our thought stream
We see how our sometimes ridiculous, repetitive thought stream continually constructs our view of who we are, who others are in our world- often through unexamined judgments, defenses, ambitions, and the whole nine yards of our conditioned reactivity.
I particularly love the response the late Indian sage Nisargadatta gave when asked about the distraction of thoughts in meditation:
The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.
The thinking mind constructs views of right and wrong, good and bad, self and other. This is the abyss. When we let thoughts come and go without clinging, we make use of them to rest in the heart that Nisargadatta mentions.
This heart knows the thoughts are only clouds passing through the empty expanse of the sky.
The settled mind of knowing you are aware is the heart of mindfulness
We simply pay attention in a way that doesn’t get sucked into whatever storms may arise in the mind, and let them pass, and rest in the settled mind of knowing you are aware.
As we familiarize ourselves with this heart of awareness, we see that whatever blocks the heart is mostly self-constructed- and insubstantial.
The twelfth-century Sufi philosopher El-Ghazali observed:
If you can lose it in a shipwreck, it isn’t yours.
al-Ghazali
As we rest for a moment, purely and simply present, awake and aware, with no agenda at all, we radically step out of our habitual comfort zones of control, manipulation, into a space of natural open awareness.
We can’t lose this in any shipwreck.
I love the line by the poet Rilke:
Ultimately, it is upon your vulnerability that you depend.
the tender heart
We open little by little into the warmth and tenderness of our own essential vulnerability, our own heart of awareness.
It’s the birthplace of the renewable resources of courage, love, empathy, and compassion we all need so much these days.
02/21/2024
not a caravan of despair
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 the communal Zen masters of old offered many a critical course correction:
Rather than think of daily life chores as something to get through; it’s fully experiencing the “getting through” part that frees the mind more profoundly than running off to a cave in the misty mountains.
In Do Dishes, Rake Leaves, she asks:
Tell me, while I’m sweeping leaves till kingdom come, is it getting in the way of my life? Is it interfering with my life? Keeping me from my life?
Do Dishes, Rake Leaves
There is a break in this piece while she makes simple observations about folding clothes and washing dishes. Then she answers her own question:
Only my imaginary life, that life of what-ifs and how-comes: the life I’m dreaming of.
Then another short narrative digression, ending with:
At the moment that I’m raking leaves, at the moment I’m doing anything, it is my life; it is all of time, and it is all of me.
Pause and ask yourself:
do you really and truly feel you are missing out on some more spiritual experience by being saddled with a mountain of laundry, a sink overflowing with dishes, or a yard full of leaves to rake?
I like Josh Korda’s line, that our mindfulness practice is
not really about being above it all; it’s about being with it all.
Whether in sitting meditation or raking leaves or doing the laundry, our core practice is to notice what is happening.
When you feel irritated, bothered, or bored, just be aware of mind states and their underlying feeling tones. Or the feeling tones and their undelying mind states.
As soon as you notice these feelings, and the awareness in which they arise, you are no longer lost in them.
As the Korean monk Haemin Sunim writes:
Awareness is inherently pure, like the open sky. Stress, irritation, and anger can temporarily cloud the sky, but they can never pollute it.
The wave of irritation, anger, boredom, or whatever it is, naturally recedes on its own as long as you don’t feed it by dwelling or spinning an interesting narrative around it.
This is not just detachment; we also learn to turn towards and gently open to the sadness or grief that seeks our attention, triggering perhaps sadness, shame or fear.
I love how Pema Chodron describes this essential skill:
We join our loss of heart with honesty and kindness. Instead of pulling back from the pain of irritation we move closer. We lean into the wave. We swim into the wave.
Mindful poetry
Mindfulness is this simple: we pay attention to what’s happening in the moment, let go of any stories we may tell ourselves about our experiences, and “swim into the wave.”
As Jiddu Krishnamurti put it:
Pure attention without judgment is not only the highest form of human intelligence but also the highest expression of love.
As you get better at it, you realize that challenging mental states are just the resistance to what is. And they rise and recede within the silent space of your awareness.
When you sit down to meditate today, feel any resistance which may come up — to aches, pains, or mental states such as boredom, restlessness, or doubt.
Savor the resistance, like a fine wine or a smooth boba tea.
As it dissipates, feel the joy of the quieting mind, which is always there.
Ours is a practice of uncovering joy and fulfillment in our lives just as they are, regardless of our circumstances.
Rumi has the last word this week; on his tomb is purportedly written:
Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of life. Though you have broken your vow a hundred times, ours is not a caravan of despair.
Poems of Rumi
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07/13/2023
be happy, meditate
Rather than striving to get rid of stress and confusion, see how these mental states act as a false barrier to our own natural calm, focus, and joy.
Mindfulness meditation is not just another way to fix what we feel might be broken in our lives. Maybe you struggle with low moods, motivation, or existential malaise. Maybe you feel lonely, or bored.
Do you sometimes feel like Peggy Lee when she sings “Is that all there is?”
Meditation, rather, is a way of discovering that whatever you may be feeling or experiencing does not define you.
As you get better at observing your inner world in the present moment, you see this world is just made up of so many mental images, self-talk, and waves of feeling tones in your body.
Our practice is about observing how these groups of experiences interact; e.g., how mental images interact with self-talk producing waves of feeling.
And these interactions often happen will-nilly in our minds.
As you separate the sensory pieces and greet each one with kindness they simply flow through. And this flow feels good.
But more importantly, you begin to realize that what you really are is unbounded joy and peace. Bad news happens, as it will from time to time, but it doesn’t define you, as …
Your sense of well-being is still there.
Rather than striving to get rid of stress and confusion, we recognize how mental states act as a false barrier to our own natural calm, focus, and joy.
What a relief!
We learn how to simply relax back into the peace and joy that was always there.
If you meditate to get something, some feeling or some imagined mental state, it becomes another goal, one which may lead you to judge yourself as failing or succeeding.
This reinforces what classical Buddhism calls “grasping and aversion” — and often leads to a scattered, anxious mind.
With time and practice, you discover an open awareness which is inherently free, peaceful and joyous. And you recognize this as a more profound and delightful “you.”
You start to appreciate the difference between pleasure and happiness.
Many of us live from pleasure to pleasure, with some waiting around in between.
But the happiness you discover with meditation practice comes from deeply experiencing your core, who and what you truly are. It’s more fulfilling than sense pleasures, which seem pedestrian in comparison.
There is no waiting around here; it’s on tap 24/7, with all the bandwidth you need.
One of my favorite meditation teachers, Cheri Huber, reminds us that:
It’s not so much what happens as it is how we are with ourselves regardless of what happens –that makes the difference in our lives.
But let’s be clear: sadness, jealousy, anger, fear, physical and emotional pain, all of it, will still arise.
But these are simply surface perturbations.
We’re talking about a radically profound change in the relationship with these experiences. Meditation is a tool to see right through them, to this inner core of unperturbed peace and happiness.
How cool is this?
Be happy, meditate!
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07/03/2023
no zombies here
One of the most frequent misunderstandings I hear about meditation practice is it will turn us into “non-judging” 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 willingness to judge.
Mindfulness is actually about slowing down the often rapid-fire judging most of us are doing non-stop – so that we become more familiar with what’s really happening at any moment before we make hasty, often inaccurate decisions, many of which we later regret.
mindfulness allows clear seeing
Mindfulness allows us to suspend judgment briefly, long enough to see a situation more clearly; it doesn’t erase our mind’s ability to judge and make clear distinctions.
Buddhist teachings make an important distinction between the “judging mind” and the “discerning mind.” The judging mind tends somewhat compulsive whereas the discerning mind is more relaxed and open, and more capable of a reasoned response.
The judging mind is often clogged up with opinions, some unacknowledged, and the inner reactions to these opinions, frequently below the surface of conscious awareness.
This judging mind often operates at a primal level psychologists call “primary process thinking” – what Buddhist meditation allows us to see as “liking and disliking” arising in response to objects of attention.
the discerning mind
In contrast, the discerning mind is quieter and calmer, which sees what is happening and makes clear choices, such as “let’s not go down this road” in the presence of angry thoughts and the welling up of a revenge fantasy in the mind, for example.
This calmer, more quiet discerning mind can be very straightforward and honest. It doesn’t act like the know-it-all judging mind- which is often hiding a sense of insecurity.
Mindfulness allows us to have our own unique tastes and preferences, to celebrate them, without one-upping or putting down others who may not feel the same way we do.
seeing through automated processes
Charles T. Tart, Ph.D., known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness, and as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, has a line I love:
Automatized processes suck!
And the judging mind is often the the leader of the pack of automatized processes.
Let’s have Dr. Tart elaborate:
Somebody looks at you funny from across a room, for example, which triggers automatized perceptions and reactions, that “People don’t love me!”
In the first fraction of a second, this is a relatively low intensity reaction, but it can suck up more and more of consciousness, and within two or three seconds you are feeling really bad about nobody loving you, and your perceptions are now further biased so that you’re more likely to notice anybody looking at you with an unpleasant expression on their face, further strengthening the process of feeling rejected.
A funny look from somebody lasting half a second might make you feel miserable the rest of the day.
Mindfulness allows us to see these “automatized perceptions and reactions” and slowly, with practice, let them dissolve.
I will leave you this week with a line from Carl Jung:
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Our marvelous mindfulness meditation practice does just this – and so much more.
05/30/2023
curiosity, mindfulness and anxiety
Mindfulness meditation helps us develop a mental-emotional “check engine light” that flashes in our awareness when we get reactive or anxious.
There’s a song that’s been banging around in my head for a couple of weeks. It was recorded in 1966 by Buffalo Springfield. The opening lyrics go something like this: There’s something happening here/ what it is ain’t exactly clear.
Sandwiched between images of street protests, there is this refrain:
I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.

Buffalo Springfield – For What it’s Worth (1967)
the check engine light in the mind
It quickly became an anthem among disenchanted youth in the late ‘60s. The song has been kicking around my brain, I think, as a sort of auditory memory “check engine light.”
It’s like my mind was telling me there is something happening here, which is not exactly clear. And that I need to stop, listen and pay attention. Our meditation helps us to develop a mental-emotional “check engine light” that flashes in our awareness as soon as we become reactive or anxious.
The more meditation hours we log, the quicker we can notice these states arise. And the quicker we can stop and listen, the easier it is to pay close attention to them before they blow out of proportion.
stop and listen
My anxiety and indignation have been trying to get my attention, and I wouldn’t stop and listen. My mind was in a fog. So as a last resort they threw me these lyrics; a nostalgic, Hail Mary pass into the end zone of despair.
The contemporary Burmese meditation teacher Sayadaw U Tejaniya advises:
When it’s all a fog, bring out curiosity
When I feel I am up against a wall, and my mind feels confused or irritated, I can’t see through the junk pile of the mind. That’s when U Tejaniya advises to bring out curiosity, to take a breath and ask:
what is happening here that isn’t exactly clear?
What am I not seeing? Hey, what’s that sound? What’s that body sensation? How is this anxiety unfolding in my body?
Curiosity re-energizes the mind, opening space to unclench our fists, to let go of the story and investigate the facts. And the facts are always pretty simple: this much sensation, plus this much self-talk, a bit of memory and a pinch of extraneous sense impressions– and voilà, home cooked anxiety. Or grumpiness.
Or any of a vast number of downer mind states. We can either succumb and whine or be curious and marvel at how the mind and body function.
The ukiyo-e illustration of a Japanese crane by Mochizuki Gyokusen, 1891.
meditation is really the only sensible approach to our issues.
Sadly, some people use meditation as yet another escape. But when we use it to fully attend to our life, real changes can happen.
We talk a lot about being mindful when the mind is caught in attachments. But I feel this advice is heavily slanted toward “liking” pleasant states of mind and body.
But attachment also happens when you are afraid of something, or dislike something. Attachment happens because of the sticky quality of our emotions.
My job at the hospital these past couple of weeks has been bonkers challenging. During the pandemic, a number of our nursing staff retired early or quit. Before I realized it I was caught in a web of fear, anxiety and complaints. I stopped writing this newsletter and curled into a ball of recrimination.
Then I caught Buffalo Springfield’s pass:
There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.
And when I stopped and asked myself hey, what’s happening here, I began to see through the junk pile in my mind. The popular Tibetan meditation teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche:
Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
FYI, “mental afflictions” is Buddhism-speak for whatever is in that junk pile: fear, anxiety, irritation, whatever.
mindfulness is not an emotional fly swatter
Our sticky emotions don’t need to go away. There is nothing to gain, and a lot of harm done, by using mindfulness as an emotional fly swatter. We are simply getting to know what our emotions feel like both in the body and in the mind, in a progressively deepening way.
This increases the accuracy and sensitivity of that check engine light.
When I’m in a fractious conversation with a supervisor at the hospital, I know on a deep level the person I call “me” me is not just the reactive impulses that arise or the feelings of pressure in my chest.
Rewording a phrase the Buddha often used, since everything is in a constant state of flux, there is really nothing I can grasp as “me.” Furthermore. any attempts to grasp–at self, others, things, or situations– leads to disappointment and discomfort.
mindfulness and curiosity
Getting curious means we notice our our conditioned reactions to pain — especially the ways we struggle to be with what is. And mindfulness helps us accept things and situations as they are.
But that doesn’t mean I let the supervisor berate or harass me, saying silently “oh, this is just changing phenomena, and not me.” Not at all
When we drop the need for the world to be something it is not, we naturally let go of rumination about how things should be. About how a supervisor should talk to an employee.
acceptance is not resignation.
The heart of mindfulness is intentionally cultivating an easy, non-judgmental attitude to whatever is happening, moment by moment. This increases our tolerance for all that is unpleasant.
But tolerance also doesn’t mean resignation. It means fully experiencing negative mind states, such as anger and guilt, without swatting them away. It means opening to, and feeling, what is. This draws the stickiness from our emotions, like a poultice on a wound.
Then we gain a little more wisdom and can better deal with what’s in front of us, like that angry supervisor.
Let’s wind down with another pointer from U Tejaniya Sayadaw:
A wise person will take advantage of a [difficult] experience to develop mindfulness, stability of mind, and understanding. Someone without wisdom will just react to the same situation with aversion.
Awareness, from the Moment You Wake Up
Is there not a more appropriate way to end this post? Take it away, Johnny:

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10/10/2022
hijacked by my news feed, again
My news feed can incline my mind toward fear, confusion and anger. But I can also re-frame my news feed to spark compassion for the suffering of others.
The news. OMG, how to deal with the news? The horrors in Ukraine, and the suffering of forced migration are just one of multiple national and world crises, many impacting people of color and the LGBTQ communities + disproportionately.
And yesterday the leaked draft U.S Supreme Court majority opinion that is likely to strike down abortion rights, which may even lead to the banning of contraceptives and interracial marriage in some states.
Study for ‘The Garden Court‘ (1889)-Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
What do I do with this anger at the obviously guileful testimony given by Gorsuch and Kavanaugh during their confirmation hearings? Feel betrayed, confused? Ignore it?“
Feel it mindfully, but most likely get flooded again?
The Buddha referred to dharma practice as moving “against the stream” of society. These days it’s more like we’re up against a tsunami of collective pain and confusion. It’s so easy to become flooded by this tsunami of fears and anxieties.
guarding the doors of the senses
I have great respect for the Buddha’s teaching on guarding the sense doors. The guidance he offers me is not to shut myself off from the world; rather, it’s not letting myself be drawn out of my centeredness while scrolling my news feed, for example.
Guarding the sense doors is the first step in reclaiming my scattered attention.
The Buddha gave the example of being a sentinel watching the doors of the citadel of the mind. You observe the comings and goings at the six senses, watchful for anything that can sneak in or leak out to bring about a surprise attack.
do we install a content blocker in our mind?
it’s not so much like having a content blocker installed in our mind. It’s more about watching for the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion creeping into the mind on little cat feet.
By sitting in meditation and watching the comings and goings at my six sense doors (of hearing, touching, feeling, touching, smelling and thinking) I am fully present for what’s needed in the moment.
I’ve lost my game these past few weeks
But over the past few months I have lost my game, being too eager to jump into my news feed unprepared. Naturally, I feel overwhelmed and exhausted.
There’s just no way around it–I need to meditate first thing in the morning before checking my news feed!
I admit I need a lot more grounding and centering these days.
Our meditation is called a “practice” because it’s a way to practice meeting the fearful and confusing challenges of our times the same way I meet each breath, sound or distraction on the cushion–with gentleness and ease.
You cant’s stop the waves of the mind, but …
The late Swami Satchidananda, the founder of Integral Yoga, has a line, which was appropriated by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
Meditation is learning how to surf the waves of the mind; no matter what they seem like to us, they are simply waves–of fear, confusion, or joy, appreciation, relief.
our meditation is a laboratory
Meditation is also a laboratory for exploring the many paradoxes of our practice. I appreciate an important one in the words Carl Rogers used to describe his humanistic approach to psychotherapy:
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.
When I find myself stuck in anger and despair, I reflect on these words. I accept I am flooded with despair. I don’t meet despair with inner aggression. But I also reflect that I need to take responsibility, nicely, for getting stuck in its tendrils.
August Macke’s Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (1909).
I can do this because I have the agency of knowing how I got into despair in the first place.
If I give in to despair, which is easy to do–have you noticed?– I’m not really responding to life, I’m wallowing in it.
“The terrorists are in the cockpit”, as my teacher Shinzen Young would say. My news feed has hijacked my attention again.
The Buddha pointed out that whatever we frequently think and ponder upon will become the “inclination of our minds”.
from wallowing to compassion
My news feed, if I let it, can incline my mind toward fear, confusion and anger at all the crises we face. But I can also re-frame my news feed to feel compassion for the suffering of others. This compassion is really the opposite of wallowing.
There is a path, and it is a process of discernment vs. distraction in each moment. The mature discernment of responses to each situation in our life, the Buddha taught, leads to the fading of attachment and the bliss of release.
Carl Rogers on the good life
I think the Buddha would have approved of Carl Rogers’ statement:
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
Reclaiming our attention, and using it for mature discernment, is the direction the Buddha advises us to follow.
It’s what we signed up for.
05/07/2022
mindful dishwashing
When I do catch the mind moment, in mindful dishwashing, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty.
A few folks have asked me if I am feeling any lingering effects from my recent Covid-19 illness. Not really; but I do I find mindful dish-washing in the kitchen sink to be much more fulfilling.
I used to find myself wondering, pre-Covid-19, if washing dishes until kingdom come was getting in the way of my life. If it was a big interference in other plans I had.
That it was lost time. But now it’s different.
Mindful dish-washing
Mindful dish-washing, doing the dishes mindfully in the in the kitchen sink, the old-fashioned way, IS my life in the moment.
It’s all of me, sudsy and slippery, saluted by dishes and lunch containers and knives, forks, spoons, tumblers, pots, pans, all inviting me to go deeper inside this sink, to roll up my sleeves.
It’s just THIS mind moment.
One lunch container dyed red from pasta sauce.
One sticky fork.
If I don’t catch the mind moment, it seems like the sink and the dishpan and the surrounding counter spaces seem so crowded with dish things I can’t see a beginning or an end.
But when I do catch the mind moment, in mindful dishwashing, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty. I take in the look of those myriad dish things, like anxious puppies at the Humane Society, waiting to be taken home.
Mindfully doing the dishes is meditation practice
When we cultivate simple, mindful awareness as a formal sitting or walking practice, we call it meditation. When we cultivate it in our home life, we call it the dishes, the laundry, or the yard full of un-raked leaves since that last windy spell we had.
This is the heart-essence of mindfulness, noticing and engaging fully with what is right in front of us. Mindful dish-washing is paying attention to what is right in front of me.
I chose that phrase “right in front of me” because it elicits an argument scholars having been having for millennia about just what the Buddha meant when he taught his followers to meditate.
In the ancient Pali literature, the Buddha instructs the meditators of his day to follow his example (in Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation):
I collect some grass or leaves that I find there into a pile and then sit down. Having folded my legs crosswise and straightened my body, I establish mindfulness in front of me.
The disagreement centers on just what the Buddha meant by establishing mindfulness “in front of me.” Some contemporary Buddhists, choosing to elevate one technique over another, often quote this passage as validating their own views of the correct way to meditate.
One group will say “in front of me” means placing ones attention on the sensation of breath at the nostrils, another will say, no, he meant on the abdomen, and yet another will claim that the others are wrong, that the whole body is what was in front of him.
Folks in the old days practiced mindful dishwashing in their own way, I’m sure.
The dishes are what’s right in front of me
I would rather take a cue from Michelle Obama and take the high road: in mindful dishwashing the dishes are what’s right “in front of me.” When balancing my checkbook, my checkbook is right “in front of me.”
And I just give myself wholeheartedly, as best I can, to just these dishes, or this checkbook. When I notice I am being half-hearted, wandering off into thinking about what I will do with my tax refund, I just come back to just what’s in front of me.
I hope the Buddha would approve.
By attending to just what is in front of us with gentle good humor, openness and full engagement, the mind carries these wholesome qualities into the next thing to come before us.
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Then sixteen year old Shuku Maseda, of Kyushu, Japan wrote wrote some years ago about the deep impression he felt reading Thich Nhat Hahn’s marvelous book The Miracle of Mindfulness. He explains:
I had read the part “Washing Dishes,” and these lines swept away my dull ideas about dishwashing. “The idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you are not doing them.” This first line astonished me.
The further I read on, the more deeply I thought. The author said the reason for dishwashing is not only to have clean dishes, but also just to do the dishes, to live fully in each moment while washing them. If we wash dishes lazily, thinking about other things, we lose and spoil the time.
I was astonished, as this is just how I felt when I practiced his instructions!
But it’s hard for us sometimes to believe that simple mindful attention is all there is to it. We complicate the matter with our judgment, putting down the ordinary as insignificant and idealizing and pining after the spiritual.
Never fully realizing they are the same thing. Never fully realizing the consequences of my mind states and my actions.
As I scrape off the leftovers or gently place vegetable scraps in the compost bin, I wonder – what new life will sprout?
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08/26/2020
simple, clear and delicious
Our simple practice of sustaining mindful attention on the most ordinary happenings in our everyday life, can bring this feeling of really being alive.
We meditate for many different reasons. Often, our original motivations morph as we move forward on this path. It’s juicy to reflect on why we keep this up.
Maybe we meditate for stress relief, maybe to lower our blood pressure, feel less anxious, or just to feel better physically. Or perhaps existentially.
an existential motivation
I think this last wrinkle is what set the Buddha on the path of meditation some 2600 years ago.
When asked why she keeps meditating, the noted Buddhist author Dorothy Figen replied:
There are many reasons. But those that stand out most strongly are learning to think clearly, and to dispel ignorance, illusion, greed, hatred and craving.
a new dimension to life
Many report discovering a new dimension to life, similar to what Emily Dickenson describes:
Life is so astonishing; it leaves very little time for anything else.
When asked a similar question, the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen said it allowed him to feel an intimacy with all things.
Mindfulness allows us to intimately see a flower, or watch a sunset, or eat a mango, with nothing in between us and the experience.
the judging mind
But at the start, far from fresh and marvelous discoveries, we discover our minds are actively judging, evaluating and comparing ourselves and our experiences.
The judging mind, that meditators are so familiar with, takes us far away from this intimacy Dogen spoke about. Although we may long for a deeper connection with the world and its often uncooperative inhabitants, we are powerfully conditioned to judge.
practice non-judgment
Consciously practicing non-judgment in meditation allows us to open up to whatever arises, and rest deeply in the mindful presence that judging blocks out. Doing this relieves us of having to do anything in particular in the present moment.
We just give up grasping for more of the pleasant, resisting the unpleasant, and ignoring our life as it unfolds moment by moment.
As Larry Rosenberg puts it, by practicing non-judgment we come into the space where we are “being with life, not just dealing with it.
Mindfulness cultivates a profound acceptance of things as they are. All the stuff that irritates, disappoints, or saddens us just needs to be given a seat at the table, to be lovingly received as if returning home from a long journey.
mindful attention is like love
Tara Brach, Ph.D describes the magic of mindful attention this way:
Attention is the most basic form of love. By paying attention we let ourselves be touched by life, and our hearts naturally become more open and engaged.
As you pay attention to more and more aspects of your everyday life, you will see progress. As Joseph Campbell once noted, it is not so much the meaning of life that we want, but rather the feeling of really being alive.
We get little tastes of this when we notice the hues of colors in a sunset, the feel of your partner’s hand as you walk on the beach, or the sensations of eating a bagel and finishing it off with a hot cup of java, of playing with dogs, or watching birds.
natural, every-day mindful attention
These are all natural, everyday happenings. What makes the difference are the qualities of heart our practice of mindful attention can bring to these experiences.
Mindful attention cuts through the radio noise the ego transmits, and discovers something new, something fresh in the shifting sensations and mental pictures we would normally take at face value.
catch the freshness as it arises
One trick—catch the freshness as it happens. And it’s always happening, it’s just we often arrive late to the present moment party. So what is freshness and how do we catch it?
In any moment we are sensing something, be it a sound, an itch or a thought. In the first moments of perception, when we get still and silent inside, we discover the utterly simple is-ness of the moment.
It’s a seeing, a knowing, that is utterly pure. It’s without thought, without associations. It’s nonverbal, completely intuitive.
Some say it is pre-verbal.
it’s like surfing your mind waves
And we catch this much as we would catch of wave while surfing, a wave here of the undulating sensations that crest into “seeing a bird” or “feeling an itch” or the sensation “I need to pee.”
But then almost instantly the thinking mind jumps in and puts a spin on everything, and begins a tale about it, and how we don’t like this or that, and this is-ness is lost.
Or so it seems. If we are patient, we see that all life is just this is-ness, arising and passing away. That’s a huge milestone in this practice.
this is our practice of mindful attention
This work we are doing, says Buddhist-inspired psychoanalyst Mark Epstein, MD, is of:
Coming back to the breath or to body sensations as soon as we forget, coming back over and over again, begins to prolong the openness that is pure mindful attention. In that split second of pristine openness, the tangles of the mind release. There can then be a vividness, an intensity of the most ordinary things of every day.
Our simple practice of sustaining mindful attention on the most ordinary happenings in our everyday life, can bring this feeling of really being alive.
The flow of our life then is simple, clear, and delicious.
01/13/2020
focusing the mind
With mindfulness we learn how to single-task, leading to focusing the mind, bringing clarity, ease and contentment in our lives.
There is a Zen story and the power of focus told by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hahn about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping fast, and it seems like the man on the horse is on his way somewhere urgently.
Another man, watching by the roadside, shouts out “Where are you going?” and the man on the horse shouts back, “I don’t know, ask the horse!”
Can you relate?
we seem to always be in a rush
We are that man on the horse, we seem to always be in a rush doing this or that, but we really don’t know what we are doing or where we are going half the time.
And we have a heck of a time stopping.
our habit energies
The horse is what Thich Nhat Hahn calls our “habit energy” which pulls us this way and that, always running. Even in our sleep.
A couple of weeks ago I had unexpected reaction to a new medication I am taking which left me in a state of heightened restlessness: I just felt like I was jumping out of my own skin. If I laid down to rest, I would be right back up again in two minutes. I would try to read soothing poetry but had to put the book down in 30 seconds. It was awful.
I think a lot of us are riding the horse of restless, habitual activity all day long. We are getting used to living with chronic frazzle.
mindfulness!
That’s why mindfulness is so important!
Mindfulness helps us recognize the chronic frazzle, which is like the rider discovering the horse has reigns. Actually sitting down to meditate is like gently tugging on those reigns for the restless energy to slow down.
single-tasking
The remedy to doing too many things at once, which is at the heart of this restless frazzle for most people, is, yes, to do only one thing at a time. This is the core skill of meditative concentration, or focusing the mind, doing one thing at time.
In actuality, most multitaskers are deluded into thinking that a) multitasking makes them better at their tasks, and b) that they are really multi-tasking.
Neuroscientists have repeatedly proven that no human multi-tasks. Rather, the brain switches very quickly from one task to another. Like having a conversation while checking your news feed while ordering pasta.
multi-tasking leaves us frazzled
The brain does each task one at a time, but it does it so fast it seems like it’s doing all three at once. This would be harmless but for the consequences: each time the brain switches tasks it take milliseconds to invoke a second level of executive functioning.
Bottom line: each time you seemingly multi-task, you are draining available resources.
You end up more stressed and spun out – it drains your overall effectiveness and can leave you feeling empty and unrewarded.
In meditation, when the inevitable distractions comes up (Did I send the rent check? Why won’t she friend me on Facebook? This so so so boring!) and we catch them and gently return to the breath, or body sensations, or sounds, we are slowly training ourselves to focus on one thing at a time.
focusing the mind
Focus brings clarity and ease of being. And focus, clarity and ease bring contentment.
This week, try to limit your external distractions, because as meditators we already have enough to deal with internally!
When you settle on a time and a place to meditate, turn everything off that can be turned off to help in focusing the mind.
And in daily life try true single-tasking!
You will feel much deeper satisfaction from your commitments, build concentration power and be less frazzled and anxious.
We can do this!
09/07/2017
meditation changes your brain–for the better
Meditation changes your brain. The you meditate, the more you respond to life from the place of calm, compassion, and awareness.

I often hear folks, when in a conversation about how they wish to improve their lives, but are struggling, or when receiving feedback from others, lament “well, that just the way I am.” Or a variation: “I’m not the kind of person that … (pays attention well, always remembers birthdays, does their laundry every week). Or the one I sometimes use “I’m too old for…”
It seems that a lot of us think our minds, the way we are, our approaches to housework or relationships or vegetables, are somehow set in place by our genetic makeup and/or our cumulative life experiences.
But a growing and seemingly overwhelming amount of scientific research challenges these assumptions.
So, as they say, I have good news and bad news for you. Let’s start with the good news.
It turns out our brains are mold-able in quite profound ways. Neuroscientists call this and this is called neuroplasticity.
Fadel Zeidan, PhD, a research fellow in the department of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest School of Medicine, and many other scientists, have found that our brain structures can be changed to predispose ourselves toward contentment, compassion and connection with others.
Even in folks who believe themselves to be melancholic by nature, or feel they are somehow born homebodies, or incurably grumpy, anxious, worry-warts, or whatever.
Yes, as you have probably guessed, people who practice mindfulness meditation regularly have remarkably different neural structures from those who don’t, says Zeidan in a 2014 book chapter titled aptly enough The Neurobiology of Mindfulness Meditation.
He writes: “They (mindfulness medidators) have brain regions that can process much higher levels of compassion and awareness than a normal person.”
I remember reading in Mindful magazine online a few years about a big study that found that experienced meditators had much more brain activity when exposed to sounds like crying or laughter than folks who did not meditate. This research concluded that mindfulness meditation actually changed their neural structures in such a way that they became more in touch with the needs of others.
I can attest to this, as when I find myself at times in self-absorbed melancholic rumination, a few seconds of mindfulness practice brings me back into the world of family, work and play such that those tendencies to space out (and check my phone, for example) increasingly lose their appeal.
We can be healthier, live longer, and make the world a better place by exploring our potential for compassionate behavior, according to neurosurgeon James Doty, founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, part of the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences. And you guessed it, mindfulness meditation is at the heart of their research over there.
More and more research is showing that meditation rewires your brain for the better. It seems that the more your brain changes from meditation, the more you tend to respond to life from the place of calm, compassion, and awareness that you discover from you meditation practice.
Neuroscientists have shown that practicing mindfulness affects brain areas related to perception, body awareness, pain tolerance, emotion regulation, introspection, complex thinking, and sense of self. This “re-wiring” of our brains results in increased focus, decreased anxiety, decreased stress, and increased memory and grey matter density. If this is not convincing enough, how about increased spontaneity and creativity, lower blood pressure, and a big boost in well-being and overall quality of life..
After one has been practicing mindful meditation, there is no effort involved in bringing these fruits of meditation into our life. How awesome is that? Here is Dr. Zeidan again:
That place where being mindful becomes more second-nature is where the plastic change in the mind happens. It’s not effortful. You don’t say you’re going to be mindful, you just are. But if you don’t practice it’ll go away. Like training a muscle. If you stop, over time that muscle is going to deteriorate.
So now we hear the bad news above: that if you give up meditation altogether, it may take a while, but those brain changes may be slowly undone.
I do like the analogy Dr. Zeidan used above: meditation is like strength training. Fitness training for the mind: we know that if we want to enjoy increased strength, vitality and oxygenation through exercise, we have to work at it consistently. And those of us who meditate regularly know that training the mind, actually transforming our neural structures to gain real, tangible effects in our lives, takes time and effort.
Meditation practice is just like going to the gym. If we practice steadily, and do our “reps,” we cultivate new ways experiencing our life.
Even business high-level executives are getting in on this. Writing in the January 8 edition of the Harvard Business Review, three contributing writers put together the excellent article Mindfulness Can Literally Change Your Brain which concludes with these words:
Mindfulness should no longer be considered a “nice-to-have” for executives. It’s a “must-have”: a way to keep our brains healthy, to support self-regulation and effective decision-making capabilities, and to protect ourselves from toxic stress. It can be integrated into one’s religious or spiritual life, or practiced as a form of secular mental training. When we take a seat, take a breath, and commit to being mindful, particularly when we gather with others who are doing the same, we have the potential to be changed.
While much of the nuts and bolts of mindfulness meditation practice may sound simplistic and somewhat mechanical, as meditation starts to change our minds we start to see the world in a radically new and freeing way.
We easily learn to step out of our own way. Even the most mundane aspects of our lives become invitations to the wonder and awe of every moment.
Our practice allows us to savor simplicity and contentment, and in in doing so, compassion grows organically.
And with practice, experience the world this way.
We come to discover perhaps what was in the minds of two very wise persons, separated as far as two humans could be by time, space and culture, when the wrote the following:
In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each person a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
(Dag Hammarskjold, 1905 -1961, Swedish diplomat, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations)
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.
(Wu-Men, Buddhist meditation master teacher, China 1183 – 1260)

02/07/2016
Guided equanimity meditation
The main work of equanimity meditation is a kind of radical, open and healing acceptance.
We have come to the fourth of the four immeasurables: meditation on equanimity. It might be the most important of the four, as without it we can easily lose our balance or direction. Whereas the previous three meditations on love, compassion and joy have a soft, heart opening quality, this meditation is, as Roshi Joan Halifx puts it, the “strong back that supports the soft front of compassion.”
Equanimity is the quality of mind that allows us to capacity to be in touch with the suffering of others when we are doing the compassion meditations, and at the same time not be overwhelmed or become undone by what comes up for us.
Equanimity gives us a stable, quiet calm, and a sense of trust that allows us to meet the world in all its naked force and sublime beauty and at the same time to fully let go of the world.
The main work of equanimity meditation is a kind of radical, open and healing acceptance.
Equanimity meditation can feel like gazing at Henri Rousseau’s Seine and Eiffel-tower in the sunset (1910)
Jon Kabat-Zinn describes this healing aspect of acceptance very nicely:
Healing does not mean curing, although the two words are often used interchangeably. While it may not be possible for us to cure ourselves or to find someone who can, it is always possible for us to heal ourselves.
Healing implies the possibility for us to relate differently to illness, disability, even death, as we learn to see with eyes of wholeness. Healing is coming to terms with things as they are.
Equanimity comes as a pivotal juncture. In earlier meditations we practiced reflections on impermanence and karma. Now we take the mind that has practices these reflections and apply it to fully be with the whole enchilada of life as it is, the unknowable and the immediate, and trust the moment to moment unfolding as it is without clinging or aversion?
The traditional reflections on equanimity meditation from the Theravada tradition allow us to integrate the truth of impermanence and karma with these phrases:
Theravada equanimity phrases
All beings are owners of their karma. Their happiness and unhappiness depend on their actions, not on my wishes for them.”
The Perfection of Equanimity
For some people this may feel a little too hard-hearted, and clinical. But we have to remember these series of reflections happen after much work has already been done in the three previous meditations on love, compassion and joy.
Joan Halifax Roshi says that equanimity is “ruthless compassion.”
In the following guided meditation we practice equanimity meditation in the same way as we have done with the three previous meditations on love, compassion and joy: we may start with ourselves, progress with close friends, neutral persons and finally with persons with whom we may be having difficulties.
We are now incorporating in our practice aspiration verses, offering the four immeasurable phrases and phrases to share the benefit of the practice with all. Those phrases appear below the video. You can simply play the video and use it as an audio guided meditation if you wish.
Beginning the meditation session:
Reflect on why it is you meditate, why you practice, and give voice to this by the recitation of the aspirations.
With boundless compassion and wisdom I will work for the welfare of all, may we be free from hunger and discord, and have joy and the world at peace.
……
Offering the 4 Immeasurables phrases:
May all beings have happiness and its causes;
May they be free from suffering and its causes;
May they never be parted from sublime bliss free from suffering;
May they dwell in great equanimity, free from attachment and aversion toward those who are near and far.
…..
Sharing the benefit of practice for the happiness and benefit of all:
By the power of this compassionate practice,
may suffering be transformed into peace,
may the hearts of all beings be opened,
and their wisdom radiate from within.
Feel free to leave a comment below.
06/05/2013
the church of what's happening now
This is our true home. We must live here, for it is only there that we are fully alive, in the church of what’s happening now.
Our son Kupai started Kindergarten last week. When I woke him up for school the other day I asked him how he had slept. He said that it was really frustrating that after we read him his story and kiss him goodnight he thinks about the events of the day.
He explained that he thinks of some apparently very meaningful things to say about his life “but there’s no one to tell” about these insights, as he is all alone with the lights off in his bedroom.
When I heard him relate this complaint, the thought of Ryokan, the 18th century Japanese hermit monk flashed into my mind. (After all these years of meditation I have come to accept that I do indeed have a monkey mind, and there’s no changing this).
There is one poem of his I vaguely remembered as my son mentioned this grievance. Later that day I looked through his poems and found the poem that had partially come into my mind:
Light sleep, the bane of old age:
Dozing off, evening dreams, waking again.
The fire in the hearth flickers; all night a steady rain
Pours off the banana tree.
Now is the time I wish to share my feelings —
But there is no one.
I am struck by the juxtaposition of the pre-sleep ruminations of a five year old boy and those of an elderly hermit Buddhist monk two hundred years before. Both deal with insights, isolation, the need to be with, to connect, the loneliness of awareness, and the awareness of loneliness.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that my true home is my life as it is, not as I want it to be, or as it used to be, or as it should be according to some spiritual notion, but as it is.
I find I need to remind myself of this every day.
Sometimes it is messy, badly in need of repairs, or unpleasant, but whatever it is, it’s my home nonetheless; I can only live this life, even if I don’t particularly like it right now.
Here is another poem, this one is by another Japanese Zen teacher, Gesshu Soko:
Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going —
Like two arrows meeting in flight,
In the midst of nothingness
There is a road that goes directly
to my true home.
Gesshu Soko wrote this poem shortly before he died. It speaks to me more about life than about death. I hear him saying that our true home is right in the middle of what’s happening now, whether it be living or dying, moving forward or moving back, coming or going.
When we are fully with with things as they are, we meet the circumstances of our lives like two arrows shot from different directions coming together point-to-point in mid-air.
Breathing in or breathing out, we live our lives as they are, not as we want them to be or they were.
Farming Village in Spring, Kamisaka Sekka (1909-1910)
This moment, now, is our true home. The road that goes directly to our true home is the road that leads to this moment. That road doesn’t go anywhere.
It doubles back on itself and leads to this moment, as it is.
Walking the road of this moment is challenging. It is a lifelong practice. It can be a breeze when we are on easy street and difficult when we don’t like where it leads, the now that is pain or regret.
Because our life as it is is our true home, we can never really step outside of it (death is another issue, and who really knows what happens then?)
I think about the character created by the comedian Flip Wilson in the 1970s- Reverend Leroy at times, a minister of the “Church of What’s Happening Now.”
I am a very happy parishioner in this church.
Earlier we read Gesshu Soko’s lines
Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going —
This about covers our life. Like two arrows meeting point-to-point in mid-flight, we meet our lives fully in each moment, again and again.
This is our true home. We must live here, for it is only place we are fully alive- singing in the church of what’s happening now.
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02/25/2008