‘Mindful’ is a word that turns up everywhere these days.  There’s mindful oral hygiene, mindful communication, even mindful diplomacy. But what does the word actually mean?  In the context of our meditation life, ‘being mindful’ or ‘practicing mindfulness’ has some specific characteristics that are helpful to be mindful of. Bare attention:  Mindfulness is kept bare, […]

Typically, the Buddha’s teachings on Wise Effort involve directing one’s awareness in four ways: To prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states To abandon the arisen unwholesome states To arouse unarisen wholesome states To maintain arisen wholesome states The Buddha seems to be implying that there’s a lot to do here in cultivating the ‘good’ and expunging the ‘bad’. […]

Wednesday is often coupled with the moniker: ‘hump day’.  Middle of the week.  Half-way done with the mind-numbing banality of workaday existence.  Half-way to the weekend when we can kick back, forget the week, and try to remember what it’s like to bealive. For many this is an all-too familiar scenario: at best, we work […]

Wise Action is where the rubber hits the road in our spiritual life.  Put simply, we can ask, “Do our actions find alignment within Wise View?”  Are we acting in ways that create suffering for ourselves and others?  Or are we acting in ways that promote connection and harmony? The Buddha framed Wise Action in terms of five training […]

The Third Limb of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path looks at Wise Speech.  In many respects, our speech emerges directly from our view of and our alignment towards the world.If we hold ourselves as separate from all we see, then our speech reifies and reinforces that sense of separation.   Or, if we align ourselves with […]

Last week, we explored the central core of the Buddha’s teachings: Wise View, or seeing things as they really are. Flowing out of Wise View, Wise Intention emerges to establish our internal alignment with this view.  In other words, we align our Heart’s aspiration to be in accordance with the understanding of how things are, particularly with respect […]

This week, my classes have emphasized the first limb of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path: Wise View. Wise View simply sees things as they really are. In the beginning, Wise View aligns our energy with the direction of the path, towards a freedom that is independent of conditions.  In a sense, Wise Viewharnesses our energy towards a deeper understanding of how […]