Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Category: daily practice

  • 7 rough spots on the meditative path

    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.

  • Buddhist insight in our day to day life

    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 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.

  • a keener love of simplicity

    a keener love of simplicity

    Meditation helps us put down the baggage we carry around. Traveling lightly, we feel airborne. We move into a keener love of simplicity.

    There is a story by Mark Twain about someone who dies and goes to “heaven” and gets a pair of wings and a harp. At first, they used the wings as a way of moving around the new place, and plucked on the strings of the harp trying to get some divine tunes out of it.

    They soon realize, though, that in this place you don’t need wings to go anywhere and simply by desiring to hear divine tunes, celestial musicians (their house band, I suppose) show up and play.

    After dropping the wings and the harp, they found a profound fulfillment in simply being.

    We all just want to be happy and feel at home in our own lives, but, as the song goes, we are looking in all the wrong places.

    We burden ourselves with unnecessary wings or harps thinking that happiness is all about having certain things or acting in a special way. Many of the voices we listen to lead us on a long walk on the hedonic treadmill Buddhists call samsara.

    But one day we have this marvelous insight: we already have what we need.

    This meditation is a radical act of self-discovery. We uncover the treasure of our very own being. We lose interest in listening to the voices shouting at us about our deficiencies.

    One of my teachers Sharon Salzberg says:

    We learn not to get caught in trying to reach after things we never really needed to begin with.

    Along these lines, the poet Rumi asks:

    How long will we fill our pockets
    Like children with dirt and stones?
    Let the world go. Holding it
    We never know ourselves, never are air-born.

    Rumi, translated by Andrew Harvey

    Meditation helps us put down the baggage we carry around so we can be airborne and travel lightly. We move into a keener love of simplicity — of lifestyle, speech, and even how to do the dishes and arrange our sitting space.

    We get less caught up in what others say about us, or imagine they say.

    The grip on our likes and dislikes softens.

    We eventually get how much nicer it is to relax into our natural, free and easy being-ness that is already right here, right now, than it is to struggle with having things be other than they are how they are.

    But if we haven’t tasted this free-and-easy being-ness, it can be a hard sell to the psyche.

    You’ll know the sweet taste of being-ness by accidentally stumbling upon it in your practice.

    You can’t make this happen on purpose.

    You just need to develop a daily meditation habit and put the time in. As the late Indian author and speaker Jiddu Krishnamurti remarked:

    Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes you accident prone.

    Then, each moment is fine. Each moment is enough.

    Each moment, no matter how mundane or annoying, is profound and meaningful.

    We practice, as the poet Wendell Berry tells us in this his poem The Wild Geese:

    … not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.

    Be well, dear reader.

  • you can’t win if you don’t play

    you can’t win if you don’t play

    Experiment infusing your meditation time with playful qualities such as curiosity, lightness, awe, and child-like delight in the present moment’s unfolding.

    The comedy improv teacher Jimmy Carrane mentioned in a blog post that the Illinois State Lottery once had a slogan that went:

    You can’t win if you don’t play.

    Although I’m not endorsing gambling here, we can apply this slogan to how we practice mindfulness. If we approach our practice as a grim duty to sit in formal meditation for so many hours per week, or to always be mindful in our daily life, well, it just doesn’t work.

    mindfulness as play

    But if we view our practice as play, we can experiment infusing our meditation time with playful qualities such as curiosity, lightness, awe, and delight. This can make the journey to enlightenment so much, well, lighter, and more fun. 

    When we actively encourage these beautiful qualities, supporting them as they arise, our practice deepens. Our life finds more dimensions in which to grow.

    Can we infuse our practice with these playful qualities?

    As we engage with all the challenging tasks we face in our day to day lives, can we bring in a little curiosity and lightness?

    We’re not trying to figure anything out; we’re simply being with whatever is happening, inviting awe and a child-like delight in the present moment’s unfolding.

    And keeping the channel open, as Martha Graham once commented:

    There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action… and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique…You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

    You have to keep yourself open … Keep the channel open.

    Martha Graham on the Life-Force of Creativity

    mindfulness as improvisation

    I’m reading this week about improv performers and how they train. What goes into training in the improv arts- in jazz, dance and comedy– aligns so well with our approach to our mindfulness as play.

    We are all improvisers, right? Whatever prefab scripts we apply to our daily challenges don’t always fit well; we are often going off script, improvising.

    And as it is so clear to see in our meditation practice: we don’t know the next thing that’s going to come to our mind, we can’t control our minds, nor should we even try.

    The improv performer and Buddhist meditator Martha Lee Turner sums up the core skills of improvisation:

    Stay in the present moment, listen carefully, do not get tangled up in your ego, keep letting go of your idea from a second ago, and trust what emerges from the group.

    from Half of the Holy Life

    trust the present moment

    This is big for many of us- to trust what emerges. As the actor and stand-up comedian Brian Posehn has this to say:

    Trust in the moment you’re experiencing right now, it will always move you to the next moment.

    Sometimes, Brian says, his improv work allows him to step out of familiar routines and scenarios that “impede freedom” as he puts it. A work which I am guessing helps him discover more opportunities for stepping free of entanglements and than he otherwise would see.

    Perhaps he would agree he is discovering ever-deepening qualities of curiosity, lightness, awe and delight as he keeps the channel open.

    Maybe those who crafted the Illinois State Lottery slogan were sly, secret mindfulness meditators, teaching us from within the belly of the beast- you can’t win if you don’t play.

  • knee pain nirvana

    knee pain nirvana

    If we get uptight about feeling uncomfortabe in meditation, just remember this simple instruction- give careful and kind attention to whatever arises.

    Do you ever find yourself feeling uncomfortable in meditation after just settling in? If your mind could text you, what would it say?

    Lately, mine would text:

    Oh, no- not my aching knee again.

    just part of the meditation experience

    From the perspective of mindful awareness, an aching knee is simply part of the meditation experience.

    So is dozing off, the tingling sensation of one leg falling asleep, feeling bored or restless.

    When the inevitable discomforts arise, some folks “wait out” that session, gritting their teeth until the bell rings.

    holding still vs settling into stillness

    The next time this happens, rather than waiting out or ending a session, try to see the difference between what Jack Kornfield calls holding still and settling into stillness.

    Holding still is like gripping your seat until the plane lands; there is some underlying fear and aggression going on.

    Settling into stillness, explains Jack, happens when you pour a little compassion on the painful areas. And you relax enough that you are willing to truly feel knee pain, or drowsiness, or boredom, as if from the inside.

    getting comfortable, for now

    If you are new to meditation practice, it takes some trial and error until you find the most comfortable posture. But even when you find that magic meditation set-up, the initial feeling of settling in and feeling comfortable doesn’t last long.

    Soon enough, something itches here, or there’s some new weird throbbing there.

    We are always experiencing these minor aches and pains, but we are not usually aware of them, as we unconsciously go through our day adjusting our posture frequently.

    If we feel dismayed about discomfort while meditating, just remember this simple instruction- give careful and kind attention to whatever arises.

    kindness is essential

    This kindness is essential to our practice, as Cheryl Huber explains:

    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.

    There is Nothing Wrong With You

    As focus and clarity improve, you notice the crucial difference between physical and emotional discomfort. Once you nail this, there’s no going back to your old ways of avoiding or manipulating your life circumstances.

    The work here is simple: allow physical pains, aches and tensions, to come up on their own, and observe how they reveal themselves in the moment, with kindness.

    The healing of your body and heart is always here, waiting for your kind attention.

    My former teacher Sharon Salzberg has the last word this week. This is how she explains why we practice in this way:

    It’s not the point to suffer; it’s the opening that’s the point. It is that lightheartedness, that bigness, that spacious mind and love that can hold the suffering and accommodate it and integrate it and understand it.

    The Power of Loving-kindness

    As we open more and more to discomforts, they open us in increasingly profound ways.

  • not a caravan of despair

    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

    read another?

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  • don’t let the mind become a lonely hunter

    don’t let the mind become a lonely hunter

    You have all you need. The bounty is already laid out at your doorstep.

    The title here steals from Carson McCuller’s remarkable debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940 when she was only 23.

    Our mind can easily turn into a lonely hunter when it thinks there is something to get or achieve in meditation.

    When we eat breakfast, can we just eat? Just taste the oatmeal or the cereal or the fruit?

    Can we relish the wisdom of our senses as they taste and smell toast and jam, and not give way to the push and pull of the mind?

    Yes, we have thoughts, we are not trying to become mindful robots.

    But can we be there for the forming of language? And equally there for the arising of thoughts of liking and disliking, catastrophizing and fantasizing?

    Let’s see.

    • 1. As you are making breakfast, you hear a ping sound and as you check out a notification on your phone you …
    • 2. notice the toast is burning.
    • 3. The thought arises: my morning is ruined.

    Can we simply hang there a second in the space that sees the thought “my morning is ruined?”

    As the late Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah remarked, if the house is flooded, can we just have a flooded house, and not also a flooded mind?

    Can we for just a brief second notice what the mind is up to? Can we name it?

    The Zen teacher and poet Norman Fischer observes, “naming a soup salty or spicy or vegetarian is different from experiencing it on the tongue, on the lips, drawing it from the spoon.”

    Our mindfulness practice exposes the conditioned guts of our own mind.

    Vanity Sounds the Horn and Ignorance Unleashes the Hounds Overconfidence, Rashness and Desire (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)

    Vanity Sounds the Horn and Ignorance Unleashes the Hounds Overconfidence, Rashness and Desire (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag), 1525

    But there is nothing you need to go hunting for, it will all show up with just a little patience with the simple instructions of our mindfulness practice.

    All that is necessary is for us to show up

    … on our cushion, or in the moment as we notice what the mind is up to while paying a parking ticket or shopping for groceries.

    And as we show up again and again, our practice matures; we can see more of this conditioning arise and pass away. We let go more easily and naturally.

    We just show up to dance with our sense impressions.

    And what an exhilarating, mournfully jubilant and spontaneous dance!

    The dance of our life!

    Ajahn Chah described this practice as committing to “taking the one seat.”

    As his student Jack Kornfield describes it:

    Just go into the room and put one chair in the center. Take the seat in the center of the room, open the doors and the windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.

    It’s just this simple. Don’t make it complicated. And don’t let your mind talk itself into becomg a lonely hunter.

    You have all you need.

    The bounty is already laid out at your doorstep.

  • monkey mind, crabby mind

    monkey mind, crabby mind

    Lately, I’ve been dealing with a relative of monkey mind I am calling crabby mind. They may be far apart on the biologic tree of life, but they are kissing cousins on my meditation mat.

    I’ve turned into a real crab.

    No, I didn’t wake up one morning to discover I was a decapod crustacean of the infra-order Brachyura, sort of like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, the sales agent in “Metamorphosis,” who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a giant dung beetle.

    I’m not covered in a thick exoskeleton and I don’t have 10 legs.

    But I’m a real crab, nonetheless.

    The other day I was trying to figure out why my cell phone was acting so weird. The person trying to help me, well, let’s say explaining techy stuff in English wasn’t one of his superpowers.

    He would begin a sentence, and not a few words into it, I would interrupt, anticipating he had misunderstood my question. I could have calmy let him finish, so we could calmly proceed to the next question, but no, I was not having it.

    After a few exchanges like these, I finally caught on–crabby mind had taken center stage in my mind. I apologized, but it was too little too late on that one.

    This morning I exchanged the usual greetings to my housemate, but within three seconds I answered a simple question in an irritated tone.

    And a few days ago I texted someone who, well, sucks at texting. We won’t go into that one.

    Yes, we all have these kinds of moments; yet, I am embarrassed to admit this. My responses were mine. I was crabby.

    When I chose “crabby” from my mental response menu, well… it happened so darn fast!

    Land crab with Tapia trifolia plant, 1731, unknown artist
    Land crab with Tapia trifolia plant, 1731, unknown artist

    Many folks complain about monkey mind-meaning their mind feels restless, and jumps from one thought to the other, like a monkey moving quickly from tree to tree in their native habitat.

    This week I’ve been dealing with a relative of monkey mind I am calling crabby mind.

    They may be far apart on the biologic tree of life, but they are kissing cousins on my meditation mat.

    And while we are in true confessions mode, my monkey mind still shows up from time to time. Yes, even after 40 years as a practicing Buddhist. And that monkey can be a real drama queen sometimes!

    Just as I have learned how not to indulge my monkey mind, I am learning how to shut down my crabby mind.

    And I need to be a quick study on this one!

    I know it makes no sense to get crabby about things that don’t matter all that much.

    Some things that trigger my crabby mind don’t even qualify as first world problems.

    At this point in this post you are probably waiting for some cool hack, some valuable insight, or some trick to nip our irritations in the bud.

    Maybe we are just too conditioned by our streaming services to expect denouements. You know, the last part of a film or narrative that draws the strands of the plot together and resolves lingering questions. 

    All I can say to those who have been affected by my crabbiness this week, I’m really sorry and I will try better.

    Winston Churchill once said:

    In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

    Sir Winston Churchill

    I just bring myself back to the breath or the body, and try to say something soothing to myself, like:

    My dear, you’re being such a crab, but let’s work on this together, shall we?

    The essence of Mahayana Buddhism is expressed in the four bodhisattva vows, one of which is:

    Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them all.

    Falling short again and again, I find consolation in my humanity, and recommit to the unfinished spiritual work ahead.

  • a contemplative life

    a contemplative life

    What makes the difference in the contemplative life are the qualities of heart we bring to our everyday experiences.

    When asked the value of contemplative life, the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen said it allowed him to feel “an intimacy with all things.”

    Mindfulness allows us to see a flower, or watch a sunset, or eat a mango, with nothing in between us and the experience. When you are this intimate, you have gotten over yourself.

    an additional dimension to life

    Many practitioners report discovering an additional dimension to life, similar to what Emily Dickenson describes:

    Life is so astonishing; it leaves very little time for anything else.

    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 takes us far away from this intimacy Dogen spoke about. Although we may long for a deeper connection with the world, our conditioning to judge and react based on those judgments, gets in the way.

    working with the judging mind

    Intentionally working with the judging mind in meditation allows us to open up to whatever arises, and rest deeply in the mindful presence that judging blocks out.

    When thoughts form an endless procession
    I vow with all beings
    to notice the spaces between them
    and give the thrushes a chance.

    Robert Aitken, Zen Vows for Daily Life
    the contemplative life as depicted in A Ground Thrush on an Ebony Orchid Branch
    A Ground Thrush on an Ebony Orchid Branch

    Doing this allows brief gaps in the judging mind to be recognized. This gives us a chance to be simply alive to the world without the burden of habitually grasping for more of the pleasant, resisting the unpleasant, and checking-out by opening our phones or engaging in compulsive activities.

    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.

    All the stuff that irritates, disappoints, or saddens us just needs to be given a seat at the table, to be received as if returning home from a long journey.

    Tara Brach describes the magic of mindful attention this way:

    Attention is the most basic form of love. By paying attention we let ourselves to be touched by life, and our hearts naturally become more open and engaged.

    the feeling of really being alive.

    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 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 with a hot cup of tea, of playing with dogs, or watching birds.

    As the late Zen teacher Toni Packer observed:

    We rarely contact this simple moment. So used to constant input and excitement, we lack fine-tuning into all the subtleties of this instant, the ability to register a quiet aliveness without the stirring of expectation.

    A Quiet Aliveness

    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.

    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.

    In these precious moments, we give the thrushes a chance, as Robert Aikten would say.

    And perhaps …

    register a quiet aliveness without the stirring of expectation.

  • when is the best time to meditate?

    when is the best time to meditate?

    … when the mind complains it does NOT want to meditate, says the Buddhist monk U Tejaniya

    I’m going to assume that you are like most of us who are into meditation–you struggle maintaining a regular practice, right; you might even ask when is the best time to meditate.

    The instructions are so very simple—be aware of what is happening in the present moment. And yet, right away, we find this challenging and humbling.

    We see that the mind has a mind of its own and won’t easily settle down.

    Even for people I know who have been meditating for forty years–daily practice is not always a cakewalk.

    When I was in graduate school we learned that the main work in therapy was working with our resistance. I think it was Irving Yalom who remarked that therapists meet clients where they are and take them where they don’t want to go.

    This is what Saydaw U Tejaniya was saying in the opening line of this post. The best time to meditate is when our resistance is front and center. When we follow his advice we chip away at the basic resistance we all experience as humans.

    when is the best time to meditate? ask Portrait-of-a-woman-by-Julie-de-Graag-1877-1924
    Portrait of a Woman by Julie de Graag (1877-1924).

    One of the first let downs is meditation is not what we thought it would be.

    We are not trying to have an out of body experience, quipped one teacher, we are trying to have an in the body experience – with how we are, just as we are, in the present moment.

    I remember reading a conversation between Jack Kornfield and Pema Chodron some years ago. They were talking about what makes the Buddhist approach to meditation special or remarkable, to which Pema Chodron added:

    The Buddhist teachings are fabulous at simply working with what’s happening as your path of awakening, rather than treating your life experiences as some kind of deviation from what is supposed to be happening.

    When I read that I just sighed. What a relief!

    It’s good to create space, get settled, and have a little bliss-out at times.

    But it’s during those moments that test our resolve that we see where we are stuck and what we need to work on, to let go of.

    And what we work on in meditation generalizes out into our life.

    That’s the magic of meditation.

    Mindfulness is about getting down to the nitty gritty of our lives, exposing our vulnerability, and being with “whatever comes your way” as Sayadaw U Tejaniya says:

    Looking for something which we think we are supposed to see is not mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation is just being aware of whatever comes your way.

    The nitty gritty of our lives is just this cup of far too hot coffee, this car which needs new tires, and which may not get me all the way to work today, or these construction workers invading my quiet morning.

    Life isn’t supposed to go anyway in particular. And neither does our meditation.

    We just show up for what is. Pema Chödrön explains:

    We get misled by the ads in magazines where people are looking blissful in their matching outfits, which also match their meditation cushions. We can get to thinking that meditation is about transcending the difficulties of your life and finding this just-swell place.

    But that doesn’t help you very much because that sets you up for being constantly disappointed with what happens every day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner—all day long.

    A frequent complaint I hear from students is they can never find the right time to meditate.

    If you are alive, like now would be a very good time.

    Let’s have Sayadaw U Tejaniya of Burma have the last words:

    Don’t assume conditions are bad for practice. There is a lot you can learn from what you think are unfavorable conditions for meditation. There may be unhappiness or suffering. Don’t make judgments that these conditions are bad for practice.

    In Dhamma, there is only what’s happening. Accept the situation and be aware.

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  • meditate every day? yes, you can!

    meditate every day? yes, you can!

    We have been practicing the opposite of what meditation asks of us for so many years, no wonder it is so hard to meditate every day.

    I am often asked why is hard to meditate every day? Despite the utter simplicity of the practice itself, why is it so difficult to consistently sit down and meditate?

    One of the best answers I know comes from Diana Winston, who is the Director of Mindfulness Education at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center. She is also a mom to her three year old daughter, as well as the author of the wonderful book- The Little Book of Being, among others.

    Here is her answer:

    It’s hard because meditation is the opposite of how we’ve been culturally conditioned.

    It’s hard because it’s not necessarily yet a habit. New habits take work.

    It’s hard because our brains are wired to be stimulated and it takes a tremendous effort to overcome our addiction to stimulation.

    It’s hard because there are seemingly far more interesting and necessary things to do. We could watch TV, work out, write poetry, scrub the grout from our showers…

    It’s hard because sometimes, we are going through intense emotions that we don’t want to feel, and nothing short of restraints are going to make us sit there and feel that grief. Sometimes the thought of meditating makes us gag. Especially when we’re having a difficult time in life.

    Yet paradoxically, that’s the best time to meditate. It’s when we need it the most.

    How to Meditate Every Day, by Diana Winston

    why do we give up on meditation?

    We have been practicing the opposite of what meditation asks of us for so many years, it’s no wonder we get frustrated and give up.

    Meditation asks us to take a step back from how we usually experience our everyday life, and observe how this life unfolds in real time, moment to moment.

    While drinking our morning coffee, rather than experiencing the taste of the coffee and the warmth of the mug in our hands, we are often troubleshooting imagined problems at work, or re-living past events– often with revisionist touches.

    Or am I the only one who “slightly” re-writes the plot lines of personal failures and other insults?

    Meditation invites us into a new relationship with experience: shifting from planning, self-congratulation or regret to touching, tasting, hearing, seeing, or feeling. From a world partially made up in our head, to the real world of raw sensory impressions, unfolding moment by moment.

    We are no longer “doing” anything. Rather, we are eavesdropping on ourselves as experiences unfold. This shift from doing, comparing, judging, and thinking, into simply observing is like applying the brakes as we approach a stop sign.

    Only many of us just roll right through.

    The shift from doing to listening in

    This shift from doing to listening in allows us to see how we are contributing to our own malaise. I love Rumi’s line here:

    Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

    Sure, we get restless and anxious. We are not used to “just breathing” because, as Diana writes, it’s the opposite of how we’ve been conditioned.

    This thing just takes patience. There is no way around it. Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us:

    Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

    And just look at what She has done with near infinite patience. We just need a sliver of that!

    Don’t think about this too much. The task of noticing what is happening in real time, and allowing that knowledge to get successively deeper and wider, carries the mind toward less and less discomfort and regret.

    Just like that.

    We all feel annoyed, frustrated and tired at times. But we discover, as Rumi points out, that as we stop weaving the threads of our own despair and boredom, the pattern improves.

    Life unfolds, and we meet it simply and clearly. A mind like this lives peacefully amidst the changing circumstances of these challenging times.

    simple practice, profound results

    I am continually amazed at the wonderful our simple practice produces. Just sitting on a cushion and tuning into our real-time lived experiences, and tuning out the radio noise of the ego = such wonder and awe.

    The mind re-shapes itself, harmonizing with the flow of life. And contentment follows. It’s that simple.

    we harmonize with the universe

    I love this observation by the Catholic Benedictine monk and author Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB:

    A lifetime may not be long enough to attune ourselves fully to the harmony of the universe. But just to become aware that we can resonate with it – that alone can be like waking up from a dream.

    Just sitting, breathing and tuning in.

    Radio noise? Static? Boredom? No problem, just sit, breathe and tune in. Happiness follows, in the Buddha’s words, “as surely as one’s shadow.”

  • in praise of maladjustment

    in praise of maladjustment

    Who is maladjusted? It is someone who lost the ability to be surprised. We must re-learn how to be surprised.

    Alice Walker has good advice for all of us who practice mindfulness meditation:

    Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

    As a meditation teacher, I’m happy when folks describe feelings familiar from childhood resurfacing in meditation, such as waking up in the morning and feeling excited for no particular reason.

    Feeling causelessly excited by life; it just bubbles out of our true nature, which we uncover in our meditation practice.

    the delight of watching young children play

    When our kids were little Katina and I would delight in watching them play in the big yard in our old house. Our son would spend hours in perpetual wonder and surprise, digging in the yard, looking at bugs, and playing with lizards and geckos.

    We delight in the company of children because they remind us of our own wondrous capacity to be surprised and delighted.

    Mindfulness meditation allows us to play in a kind of continual surprise, as we let go of that heavy know-it-all part of us, and just bask in the unfolding moments.

    Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel, the late Polish-born American professor of Jewish theology, had this to say:

    An individual dies when they cease to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I’m not accommodated… I’m still surprised. That’s why I can hope against it.

    We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society.

    what is maladjusted? It is being brainwashed by consumerism and the conspiracy of mediocrity.

    be maladjusted!

    What a thing to say–that he is the most maladjusted person in society! Who, then, is maladjusted?

    Anyone, it seems, who’s not drinking the Kool-Aid served by the media 24/7.

    He is saying we could do well to challenge the messages we receive on multiple media channels subtly encouraging mediocrity and mindless consumerism.

    Luckily for us, mindfulness meditation has a built-in channel of innocent delight and contentment. As we sit quietly in meditation, contentment seeps into our being like the smell of the sweet pikake blossoms on the evening breeze.

    to be spiritual is to be amazed

    Abraham J. Heschel again:

    Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

    Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

    Meditation helps us stay content and sane in this crazy world. Who exactly is maladjusted? It means not being content with your life as its is.

    Genuine contentment is one of the most revolutionary acts for a person in the 21st century; it goes against cultural norms and conditioning. This all begs the question: just what is this contentment?

    being maladjusted to society is being content with what we have
    being maladjusted in our society is being content with what we have

    being happy

    For me, it’s about being happy with who I am right now: overweight, under-exercised, and not looking forward to the hour-long drive home in heavy morning traffic from my night shift job.

    Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui, a Holistic Embodiment Coach, writes:

    What if I just accept this mediocre body of mine that is neither big nor small? Just in between. And I embrace that I have no desire to work for rock hard abs or 18% body fat. And I make peace with it and decide that when I lie on my deathbed, I will never regret having just been me.

    What if all I really want is a small, slow, simple life.

    I used to feel quite depressed. A part of me was still consumed with fantasies and expectations: my kids, my marriage, my meditation practice, my night shift job, my… my… my…and “I” always fell short of those fantasies.

    no regrets

    What is maladjusted? It means living a life of no regrets. I’m much happier now. I am living Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui’s line above:

    …when I lie on my deathbed, I will never regret having just been me.

    Nothing terribly dramatic happened. No huge epiphany. No burning bushes. No lights, sparks or kundalini rush.

    discover contentment here and now

    Discovering contentment is about letting go of these fantasies, and realizing that life is truly amazing without them. I would even say–especially without them.

    It’s about embracing my limitations and not being defined by them. It’s about relishing in being maladjusted.

    As we silently watch these fantasies arise and fall within mindful awareness, we see how powerfully they filter our perceptions, how they distort our view of things, just as they are.

    let thoughts come and go

    We experience the relief of letting thoughts come and go. As psychologist Elisha Goldstein says:

    It’s like being at a laundromat watching the clothes tumble in a big dryer. We don’t have to tumble along with the clothes; we can just watch them fall through space.

    The mind doesn’t need to go blank–we just need a little distance from thought so we don’t tumble along with them. As we gently let them pass through us, and we see how incredibly awesome this precious life truly is, just as it is right now.

    As we expect nothing, we join hands with Alice Walker and Abraham J. Heschel, living frugally in surprise and amazement.

  • do you have to meditate every day?

    do you have to meditate every day?

    Do you have to meditate every day? The question really should be can I be happily present with things just as they are, rather than struggling with a goal?

    I find that newer students don’t ask this question much in their meditation groups, fearing, perhaps, that they might be the only ones with this concern. I still struggle with having consistent, regular meditation, and I have been at this for 41 years.

    But I have noticed that I don’t have those punitive feelings about this anymore. I find myself more and more happily present with things just as they are.

    And I have meditation to thank for this.

    meditator’s guilt

    It’s taken a while to get over this “meditator’s guilt” – a kind of shame some folks feel when they have trouble meditating regularly, feeling all meditators should meditate every day.

    Leon Perrault 1904 Innocence 1024

    We can feel guilty that we are not meditating enough, or well enough, or not living up to some goal we create for ourselves.

    So folks either give up, or keep plodding away out of a sense of duty, which, unfortunately, can bring more torment than tranquility.

    the central issue

    The central issue is the one the historical Buddha emphasized his whole teaching career–>> that we somehow insist on having an experience other than the one we are having.

    For example, folks are often drawn to meditation out of a desire to feel better in some way. If we meditate with this desire to feel good, we selectively internalize that meditation is all about feeling good, calm, and peaceful.

    And when we don’t feel calm or peaceful, we can get frustrated, even agitated.

    So, do you have to meditate every day? Doing meditation daily certainly helps!

    let go of our ideas about meditation

    Despite repeated encouragement to relax and let go of our ideas about meditation, and our fantasies of how we should feel when it works, it can take a while for this to really sink in.

    Crucial to the practice is being radically OK with ourselves just as we are in the present moment. In doing so, we also let go of the potentially aggressive notion of self-improvement.

    Mindfulness meditation often starts out by working with an uncooperative and rebellious mind. You know this mind-it’s the one that spaces out, goes into la-la land, feels anxious, and wants out.

    It’s the mind that opens its eyes during group meditation, looks at the clock, and says “Ugh, ten more minutes!”

    Mindfulness takes us right up to the boundaries of our physical and emotional discomfort. But it allows us to be OK there, to settle down, and lose the fear.

    the wisdom to see things as they really are

    The Burmese teacher Sayadaw U Tejaniya repeats this over and over in many different ways:

    Being mindfully present with whatever arises, experiencing it with equanimity, acceptance, non-identification, kindness, and compassion, develops the let go of our ideas about meditation, not just as they appear to be.

    And with this understanding comes the end of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

    Do you have to meditate every day? Doing meditation daily is a concern for many I think because they are often experiencing feeling the opposite of what they expected. But if they hang in there they find that instead of “getting” happiness or relief from stress, it’s the letting go of the wanting of happiness that actually liberates them from distress and frustration.

    letting go of wanting happiness

    This is a huge turning point in their practice – the more they let go, the happier they are. They can see that ultimate liberation is the ultimate letting go of everything.

    Sayadaw U Tejaniya gets the last word this week:

    There is no way you can rush progress in meditation. We can only proceed steadily. But we don’t stop either. How much you do, how skillful you are, how much you are able to do, the benefits of that are already accruing, are already present. When you understand this then the greed to get more, to do better, to get a certain result, will not arise.

    Wishing you well on this wonderful journey.


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  • does meditation help with patience?

    does meditation help with patience?

    I think so, but the real question is how to develop patience with the meditation process itself.

    The only way to fail at meditation is to stop meditating.

    As long as you show up, the meditative process happens. It’s really simple: sit down on a chair or a cushion, set the timer on your phone for, let’s say, 20 minutes, then pay attention to how your body feels, or how your breath feels.

    Notice when you’ve been distracted, like for the 200th time, it doesn’t matter, and gently come back to feeling your body or the breath.

    why do people give up?

    And did I mention the benefits of meditation, both to physical as well as emotional well-being, are through the roof? So if the benefits are so great, and the practice so simple, why do people give up?

    The three complaints I hear the most are: it’s not what I expected, it’s so boring, and I just can’t meditate– I’m always thinking.

    Welcome to the club! If you experience any of those three, or a host of other complaints, it means meditation is actually working.

    meditation is not what I expected

    Is anything ever what we expected? Meditation is often not what we expected. And these expectations can cause needless frustration.

    There is one remedy for all the above: let go of ideas of how things should be turning out and instead turn with interest and curiosity to what is actually happening.

    whatever happens is just fine

    Meditation involves a willingness to see what actually happens, not seeking experiences we are told should happen. Whatever happens is just fine.

    Bored? Investigate how the concept of boredom presents itself. Can’t stop thinking? No problem, meditation is definitely not about stopping your mind from thinking; rather, explore the thinking mind itself.

    just stay open and receptive to what is

    All that is asked of you is to stay open and receptive to your present moment’s experience, no matter what that is.

    Often, when meditation doesn’t seem to be going our way, we dig in and struggle. We tense up. Or when we feel bored we go off into fantasy. When you notice this happening, just get curious and interested in that.

    meditation asks us to be patient with ourselves.

    Patience brings a kind of self-compassion to our awareness, helping us accept our own process. A kind of compassion that melts our resistance to our present moment’s experience.

    A compassion that allows us to be open to each moment as it unfolds, without judgement, trusting that the process is unfolding.

    and have a sense of humor

    This kind of patience is easy going. There can be humor and playfulness here. It’s not a grin and bear it kind of patience. As Pema Chodron says about patience in our meditation practice:

    It’s a kind of loving-kindness–for your own imperfections, for your own limitations, for not living up to your own high ideals. Just being patient with the fact that you’re human and that you make mistakes. That’s more important than getting it right. There’s a slogan someone once came up with that I like: “Lower your standards and relax as it is.”

    Or as the 16th century French Bishop of Geneva, Frances de Sales, advised:

    Most importantly, don’t lose heart, be patient, wait, do all you can to develop a spirit of compassion. 

    The contemporary Burmese meditation teacher U Tejaniya Sayadaw has a lot to say about how to skillfully approach our meditation practice:

    Meditating is watching and waiting patiently with awareness and understanding. Meditation is NOT trying to experience something you have read or heard about. Just pay attention to the present moment. Don’t get lost in thoughts about the past or the future. Don’t try to create anything, and don’t reject what is happening. Just be aware.

    Please keep going.

    You are actually already there!

  • mindful dishwashing

    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 I am sure
    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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  • inner simplicity

    inner simplicity

    Meditation is not easy, I get it. There are aches and pains in the body and the mind can get restless … and there is inner simplicity.

    But, as Hawaii-born retired Sumo grand-master Akebono would say to reporters after winning yet another match, “I just try my best.”

    That’s all we ask. Try your best.

    Just show up on the cushion, again and again. If you just keep showing up, the magic starts to happen – but it helps a lot to show up in the right way.

    We can all dutifully drag ourselves to the cushion, set the timer, and wait it out. Or, we can discover the rapture of being fully alive in each moment.

    it’s how we show up

    Why do we experience these two often conflicting streams of experience? It’s how we show up.

    We quietly refresh the heart with our breath meditation. Our steady intention and playful inquisitiveness nourish the inner branches and leaves to sprout green, alive, vivid shoots.

    “Rivulets of delight” (as nico hase recently mentioned in a talk) flow into the spaces in our body once closed, dark, vague or numb, as we relax fully into what each moment of life brings.

    There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant . . . more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle.

    Baudelaire

    How do make a grey heart green? By showing up every day to water it!

    But the showing up itself is a practice—showing up with respect, patience, curiosity, and no real agenda other than to show up and see what’s here.

    And stay in our aliveness.

    our confidence in the practice grows slowly

    As confidence in this simple practice grows, our addictions to the trinkets of the world begin to fade. We find our self sitting more and naturally being more mindful at work.

    We begin to taste the fruits of an “inner austerity” — of shifting from having our own needs front and center and opening to the needs and discomforts of others as make the loving-kindness practices an integral part of our day.

    a love for inner simplicity

    We softly move into a keener love for inner and outer simplicity — of life style, speech, and even how arrange our sitting space and do the dishes.

    We get less caught up in what others say about us, or imagine what they say. The grip on our likes and dislikes begins to soften.

    The other day I read a short piece by the former Buddhist nun Marine Batchelor, in which she recalls various conversations she had while doing intensive practice in Korea. Here is one I particularly love:

    I once went to speak with a nun I really respected, to ask her about meditation. “What about practice?” I asked her.

    “Practice? Oh, just do it. There is nothing to say about practice. You just have to do it. You do it in the meditation hall, you do it in your daily life. There is nothing to say.”

    This inner simplicity really touched me. So simple, yet so deep.

  • coming home

    coming home

    No matter how nice our home is, it is still “of the of world,” as my Buddhist teachers in Asia would say.

    We are settling in to a new house. As I get older, moving feels more emotional, more gut-wrenching. Witnessing our old home slowly coming apart, with carefully chosen bits going into carefully chosen boxes, I felt a little vulnerable.

    Little bits of me separated, re-arranged with other bits, and put away. Only to re-emerge and be put into new places, with less dust and more air.

    Carrying one of the last boxes out of the old house, I heard my footsteps echo through the fresh, open spaces of our old home.

    Yes, it’s all temporary, everything eventually falls apart, and as the Buddhist masters of old would say

    The end of collection is dispersion.
    The end of rising is falling.
    The end of meeting is parting.

    and yet, and yet …

    Yes, of course, but as the 17th century poet and Jodo Shinshu priest Issa wrote after his first-born child died shortly after birth —

    The world of dew —
    A world of dew it is indeed,
    And yet, and yet . . .

    And yet there is a longing for stability, for protection, for refuge.

    For Issa at that moment, impermanence is no longer just a philosophical concept, but a real feeling of sadness and longing.

    The poignant “and yet, and yet…” also points to something else, something waiting for him to discover, something he feels is missing.

    I fall for it again

    What is missing? Is ask myself as the tears dodge bits of dust and dried sweat on my unshaven cheeks as they trickle down.

    Then I catch myself. I fell for it again! It’s just life being life. No mistake anywhere, and nothing is missing.

    During times of stress, transition, heartache, and struggle it is easy to get stuck in “and yet, and yet…” We can feel uprooted at times, abandoned, homeless.

    So, what is this place like where nothing is missing? Where we don’t feel uprooted even when we are?

    Where is home?

    Essayist and novelist Pico Iyer, in his Ted Talk ‘Where Is Home? “says what we call our real home has more to do with a piece of your soul, not your soil.

    While our outer home is a protected space in which to thrive; a place of refuge from the storms of the world—it’s still “of the of world,” as my Buddhist teachers in Asia would say.

    The old house, as we call it now, is someone else’s house. It was home, but now it’s not. And this house will be someone’s else’s when we are asked to move again. It’s just a temporary shelter, and not just because we are renters.

    No place to settle among conditioned patterning

    “You can’t make a permanent home in a sankhara” Ajahn Chah would say.

    There is no place to settle down in conditioned patterns. But you don’t really need to worry about it, he retorts, because it’s not your real home anyway. Ajahn Chah continues:

    Anyone can build a house of wood and bricks, but that that sort of home is not our real home. It’s a home in the world and it follows the ways of the world. Our real home is inner peace. An external material home may well be pretty, but sooner or later we’ll have to give it up. It’s not a place we can live in permanently because it doesn’t truly belong to us, it’s part of the world.

    The refuge we never leave

    When we come home to who we are in our entirety, not to some borrowed or imposed image, but to who we are, as we are, moment by moment, we discover we never left the “place” of true refuge and inner peace Ajahn Chah describes.

    We have been pining for something that has been there all along – a silent wakefulness through which all our experiences to pass effortlessly.

    The poet Mark Nepo writes that this wakefulness is not a destination but a song the human heart keeps singing, the way birds keep singing at the first sign of light; and the journey of becoming who we truly are never ends.

    We don’t really arrive anywhere new; we just keep growing out of that radical peace of being. We blossom out from the timeless loving awareness; we shift smoothly into what Ajahn Chah called “the One Who Knows,” the impersonal witness to all things.

    Our simple, dedicated mindfulness practice reveals a remarkable peace within, just waiting for you. A place inside beyond the clutch of the thinking mind, untouched by any memory or personal history.

    And, funny thing, the body is always giving us subtle hints to go there, but we seldom listen.

    It’s really so simple

    It’s so simple, really. Just be kind to yourself and others. And meditate.

    Open your being to embrace whatever happens with less judgment and more loving-kindness, especially to your imperfections and vulnerabilities.

    And come home for the holidays, without leaving your seat.

  • a moveable monastery

    a moveable monastery

    The contemplative life benefits from periodic self-reflection

    We meditate for many different reasons. Often, our original motivations morph as we move forward on this path. It’s juicy to reflect why we keep this up; and to be really honest with ourselves.

    Dorothy Figen offers us one answer —

    Why meditate? 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.”

    The contemplative life benefits from periodic, intensive self-reflection. Meditation allows you to take a clean step back to see how you are behaving, what you obsess over, and what trips you up.

    Institutionalized, fortnightly self-reflection

    While training as a young monastic in South Asia, we would gather on new moon and full moon nights to recite the rules of the order, to openly declare our transgressions and, frankly, bear testament to each other’s humanity. To re-align ourselves with the sacred intention to “dispel ignorance, illusion, greed and craving.”

    I was initially terrified to participate in these fortnightly recitations. But slowly I came to see what I was doing not as a struggle to attain some perfect monastic ideal, but as a way to affirm this deep human wish to dispel our collective ignorance.

    And to aim glimmers of awareness into those dark places of wounding, of pain, of confusion.

    I came to see great power in those fortnightly confessional and renewal ceremonies. This “forced” self-observation began to make some sense. We can do this ourselves.

    Set up your own intensive self-reflection schedule

    Try setting aside one or two days a month for intensive self-reflection. The practice can be as simple as printing out these six questions and posting them on your refrigerator. Get a cheap journal at the drug store and write down your answers, and work with the questions throughout your day.

    • Have I been kind?
    • Have I been generous?
    • Have I been even-tempered?
    • Honest?
    • Patient?
    • Empathetic?

    Of course, there are all manner of exercises for self-reflection; you can make up your own practice. The main thing, though, is to find questions that resonate and prompt deeper self-examination.

    Mindful of our self-deceptions

    Monastics since the time of the Buddha have been keenly aware of the human proclivity to be less than entirely upfront with ourselves.

    The contemporary German scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo observes:

    The habit of employing self-deception to maintain one’s self esteem has often become so ingrained that the first step is to acknowledge hidden emotions, motives and tendencies in the mind without immediately suppressing them.”

    That’s why it is so important to let mindfulness into those dark places.

    a moveable monastery takes shape

    We can start by bringing awareness to those ordinary moments when we resist being mindful—when we feel tired, and in the midst of everyday grumpiness.

    Our ordinary instabilities and irritabilities; our ordinary struggles are the practice.

    Noelle Oxenhandler observes:

    What is mindfulness, if not the practice of bringing the mind to those places where it goes missing? Again and again, we wake ourselves up at the point where drowsiness, distractions, and daydreams arise.”

    Wherever the mind takes us, we simply come back to the present. We pull out of the morass of mental images and settle into a very simple and bare experience of the here-and-now.

    monastery

    Our everyday struggles form the transparent walls of our movable monastery.

    Jack Kornfield speaks eloquently about becoming your own monastery as we learn to bring our work on the cushion into the world:

    When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness.”

    After years of practice, while our lives may not change all that much on the outside, they have changed fundamentally on the inside.

    Choosing accommodation over contention

    Sylvia Boorstein expresses this change over time as the heart becoming gradually more accommodating:

    Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart’s capacity to accept life as it is. It teaches the heart to be more accommodating, not by beating it into submission, but by making it clear that accommodation is a gratifying choice.”

    Our monastery, Ajahn Sumedo says, teaches you to open to the way things are. I think he means your own movable monastery, too, your own everyday struggles.

    Conditions are always good enough!

    Like a stern coach, Ajahn Sumedo calls us on our exit strategies:

    “We can always imagine more perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone else should behave. But it’s not our task to create an ideal. It’s our task to see how it is, and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough.”

    Let’s be patient with ourselves and each other as we walk the path that dispels all sorrows and affirms our deepest joys and connections.

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  • why I stopped making new year’s resolutions

    why I stopped making new year’s resolutions

    I decided to not make any new year’s resolutions. Well, except maybe one. I resolve to just be myself.

    I always felt making a set of resolutions meant needing to improve myself, be better at something, or change my body somehow.

    The blogger Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui, a working, single mom who writes about minimalism and the anti-consumption movement, recently wrote:

    What if I just accept this mediocre body of mine that is neither big nor small? Just in between. And I embrace that I have no desire to work for rock hard abs or 18% body fat. And I make peace with it and decide that when I lie on my deathbed I will never regret having just been me.

    Oscar Wilde once quipped:

    Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.

    This year, I resolve to see how I am when I am being inauthentic.

    I resolve not to try to be someone I am not; or some fantasy I want to grow into, like an enlightened Tom 2.0

    And to use mindfulness to see through the masks I make to hide behind.

    Can we find moments in our life when we can step back and reflect on a simple intention like this? To just be here, now, without pretense, free and open, relaxed and at peace?

    new year's resolutions
    Chicken Vendor, by Edivaldo Barbosa de Souza

    I think much of what we deal with in meditation is about struggling with the way things are, and wanting things to be otherwise.

    I suggest a maturing practice, a deepening practice, appreciaties the possibilities of relaxing.

    Meditation can turn into a kind of extreme sport, with elaborate training programs for those aspiring to the elite ranks. But what if we set aside those fantasies for a while and just chilled, relaxed?

    Carl Jung envisioned a major shift in understanding the spiritual path –rather than ascending a steep mountain path seeking perfection, instead we “unfold into wholeness.”

    The wholeness that is who we are right here and now.

    We are not so much attempting to vaporize up our bad karma or destroy our demons, as it is really hard to do a decent job of this; our struggling attempts can easily leave us with more problems.

    Rather, perhaps we need to chill a little and embrace life in all its realness – messy, incomplete, yet vibrantly alive- now, without trying to improve or tweak anything. Trying to tweak things just brings more frustration.

    And really, the present moment is un-tweak-able.

    It’s just simply coming home again and again. No striving necessary.

    As it says in the Zhuangzi, the ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period (476–221 BC):

    Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

    And in truly seeing this, that we are fully endowed with all we need, there may be a juicy-ness, afullness, some call it a joy, in just experiencing, without grasping or rejecting, what arises in the moment completely.

    This is a quiet and deep joy that, in a way, has always been there, covered over by strata of reactivity and compulsiveness which subtly rule our lives, in one form or another.

    Can we practice like this?

  • grateful mind yoga

    grateful mind yoga

    A complaint I sometimes hear from folks who are trying to be happy by practicing meditation is that meditation is just not working. Putting effort to change your mental state does sometimes lead to frustration. Gratefulness, however, is a wholesome mental state which changes everything.

    notice when you naturally feel content in your daily life

    Begin to notice moments in your day when you naturally feel peaceful and content.

    If you tend to have a life filled with drama, like in your workplace, start being aware of moments when you’re not uncomfortable, fretful, or consumed.

    wholesome states of mind

    The key could be for you to cultivate wholesome states of mind.

    In order to experience deeper well-being my teachers taught me to deliberately develop specific wholesome mental states, such as kindness, generosity, empathy, well-wishing and gratefulness.

    These mental states have an expansive quality; they open your heart and create more ease in your mind. But more importantly, they condition the following moment, which leads to more contentment and joy.

    unwholesome states of mind

    They contrast with the unwholesome mental states, such as greed, anger and envy, which provide momentary pleasure but actually contract the mind and lead to discomfort, distress and frustration.

    I am reminded of the Overeater’s Anonymous slogan: “a moment of bliss on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”

    cultivate the wholesome

    Take an honest look at what mental states come up for you both on and off the cushion. Are they wholesome and lead to inner ease and expansiveness? And if wholesome mental states do not arise, try to make a genuine attempt to cultivate them.

    This is a lifetime’s practice.

    Mindfulness allows us to simplify our life, moment by moment we are present with what is presented to us by our senses.

    When we experience the tug and push of compelling thoughts or emotions we gently acknowledge them and come back to the utter simplicity of this breath, or this sound, or the touch of our feet in “rubbah slippahs” as we walk.

    letting go

    We come back again and again, gently, kindly, by simply letting go of everything that is not this breath, this sound, this touch, this smell.

    And in this letting go sometimes we get a glimpse, an intuition, that this moment is enough, just as it is.

    I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands.

    ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

    silent gratefulness

    Moment by mindful moment we nurture the present by simply being here for it, welcoming it, silently grateful for this gift that is that is this breath, this sound, this touch, this smell of the plumeria blossoms outside my window.

    This silent gratefulness is one of the most powerful wholesome mental states.

    the splendor of the present

    Step by step, the path of mindfulness reveals the splendor of the present here in just this moment.

    When we are silently grateful, we appreciate our life just as it is. And through this appreciation, we feel compassion and loving-kindness for others.

    In other words, we find contentment.

    This is grateful mind yoga.