When I remember this saying, my heart releases what it’s fixated on, and it’s almost always fixated or worrying about something. Sylvia Boorstein once quipped that she is a “recovering worrier.” That’s me. But my recovery is a work in progress. I am even anxious about my own meditation practice! As my day begins, my…

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….

  I am often asked why I meditate. Sometimes it’s phrased – What are you trying to accomplish by just sitting on a cushion?   “Since my house burned downI now have a better viewof the rising moon”   This moving haiku was written by Mizuta Masahide, a 17th century poet and samurai. It has…

Hurricane Lane may be an opportunity to mindfully experience the discomforts many face as facts of life: no dependable electric power, no clean, running water, no internet, and no cell service. As I write this weekly email, we are preparing, here in Honolulu, for Hurricane Lane, a massive category 4 storm predicted to make landfall…

  It’s been raining a lot here in Honolulu. There is something unspeakably beautiful about listening to the rain. Not just hearing the rain, in the background of our important lives, but actually listening to it.   As Thomas Merton explains:   What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at…

Our meditation practice shows us radical enoughness. We have all we need to lead a fulfilling life now. If you can breathe, you can be mindful.   Your of well-being is actually independent of conditions. As your practice matures over time, the feeling of well-being arises more frequently and in all kinds of situations. We…

  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. Maybe you sometimes feel like Peggy Lee when she sang “Is that all there is?” Meditation, rather, is a way…

There is a Tibetan saying popular in mindfulness circles: “If you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.”   When I remember this saying, my heart releases what it’s fixated on, and it’s almost always fixated or worrying about something. Sylvia Boorstein once quipped that she is a “recovering worrier.”…

This year, I decided to not make any 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…

Someone once asked Suzuki Roshi, the pioneering Zen teacher from Japan who founded the Zen Center of San Francisco in 1969: “Roshi, what’s the most important thing?” and he answered, “To find out what’s the most important thing.” I think this question of how we live our life, how we actually live this life—not what…

As I think about recent events here in the USA, a line keeps coming up, from a poem by Pablo Neruda: You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. The Republicans in the House just passed a tax bill, about which the Buddhist teacher Ethan Nichtern tweeted “the biggest heist…

I am often asked why I meditate. Sometimes it’s phrased – What are you trying to accomplish by just sitting on a cushion? Depending on who asks, I answer something like – To clearly see why I suffer, and with that understanding to cultivate peace of mind and a kind heart. I have personally found…

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…

  We suffer because we forget what we truly are. We take refuge and remember.   We forget we are love and compassion; that we are hard-wired to feel and connect. We forget we are truly and profoundly good through and through. Yet we settle for less, much less. Tara Brach said in one of…

  The lychees didn’t fruit much this year. In fact, barely at all. I thought maybe it was something I said? Karma, you know. Two years ago, our family was excited to see the tiny new buds of incredibly young lychees like a slow-breaking wave of green on the big venerable tree in our backyard….

  why we meditate We meditate for lots of reasons: stress relief, maybe lower our blood pressure, feel less anxious, or just to feel better, physically and maybe existentially. But I think under all these is a deeper one, which the Buddha made the central message of his teaching: to be free from suffering in…

When we sit and settle our body and begin to explore that unique space that opens up when we close our eyes: –the tactile dimension of pure body sensations, –the sonic realm of sounds arising and passing in the tropical coolness of early evening or morning, –and the mental landscape of memories and chatter ……