check the lining of your own mind

check the lining of your own mind

Just when I thought things couldn’t get more dreadful, they did. Yes, I know pandemics happen. Evolution hurts sometimes, I guess. Writing in the New York Times on September 23rd of this year, the epidemiologist and physician Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran observed Evolution can sometimes look like destruction to the untrained eye. We just passed 200,000…

now more than ever

now more than ever

The suffering in the world is overwhelming. But the whole mess looks differently when we have a rested, settled mind.   Everyone is frazzled.  Covid-19, politics, racial and economic disparities, police shootings, school shootings. That’s why it’s really important to sit down and do some formal meditation practice. Every day. It’s too easy to get…

it’s just nature, my dear
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it’s just nature, my dear

  In April of last year Doug McGill interviewed the Burmese meditation teacher Sayadaw U Tejaniya concerning how a meditator can practice mindfulness in the pandemic. His response was “practice as usual.” OK, really? His dry answers to the questions posed by the Western interviewer stewed in the back of my mind for a few…

not knowing

not knowing

  Anything can happen. Yes, on the surface, that can feel ominous, especially in these times. But it is precisely because anything can happen that allows us to experience freedom from stress, grief, and burnout. It’s amazing to reflect how much we don’t know. And how consequential our open questions are. When, and how, will…