Category: daily practice
7 rough spots on the meditative path
Here are some common rough spots on the meditative path and how to deal with them. What makes it so hard to stick with a simple meditation we do every day? What gets in our way,…
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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…
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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…
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you can’t win if you don’t play
Experiment infusing your meditation time with playful qualities 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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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appreciate your life
We savor our life just as it is, messy, littered with abandoned to-do lists and unfulfilled expectations. We appreciate our life now, we’re not just managing it. When asked about the fruit of meditative life,…
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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…
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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…
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how to meditate every day when it seems impossible
The suffering in the world is overwhelming, but the whole mess looks differently when we when know how to meditate every day. Everyone is frazzled. Shootings, politics, racial and economic disparities, climate catastrophies. That’s why it’s really…
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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.…
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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…
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savor the resistance
Do we feel we are missing out on some better, or more spiritual, experience by being stuck with a mountain of laundry, a sink overflowing with dishes, or a yard full of leaves to rake? Karen…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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,…
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mindfulness meditation practice & the tiny purple flowers by the side of the road
We already have what we need – “your brain and your heart are your temples, and your philosophy, kindness.” It seems many of us get hooked by trying to get somewhere in our mindfulness meditation practice. …
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