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….

safety

safety

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…

guns n’lotuses

The prominent Buddhist teacher, author, and activist, Joan Halifax, on the day of this shooting tweeted “I want to live in a country that loves its children more than its guns.”   I would like to wish everyone a thoughtful International Woman’s Day (today, March 8, 2018). Here in the USA, the #MeToo and the…

listening

listening

  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…

enoughness

enoughness

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…

be happy

be happy

  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…

the little things

the little things

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.”…

why I stopped making new year’s resolutions

why I stopped making new year’s resolutions

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…

non-contention

non-contention

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…

facts of life

facts of life

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…

the secret beauty of the heart

Understanding the central message of the Buddhist traditions can be a complex undertaking. I have met several people who have dedicated their entire adult lives to studying the sutras in the original languages. While their ability to synthesize complex topics into understandable English is impressive, I did not feel their hearts were liberated from what…

recognition

Fairy tales often convey deep meaning. Take Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the ugly duckling. A baby swan is orphaned and raised by ducks. The ducks know he is not one of them, and the little creature suffers a lot of abuse from them. fundamental confusion The baby swan then leaves in search of where…

emotions

I would like to address a couple of misconceptions I often hear regarding meditation and one’s emotional life. The first is we meditate to either to get rid of negative emotions, such as anger, or to manufacture positive ones, such as joy. The second is meditation erases our emotions altogether, leaving us emotional flat-liners. nothing…

focus

Mindfulness helps us recognize the chronic frazzle, which is like discovering the horse you are riding has reigns. Actually sitting down to meditate is like gently tugging on those reigns for the restless energy to slow down. There is a Zen story and the power of focus told by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hahn…

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…

refuge

refuge

  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…

lychees

lychees

  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….

trust

trust

  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…

innocence

innocence

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 ……