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I wanted to begin this week’s thread with a quotation from the Indian teacher, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: “All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are a longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well… Desire itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in […]

In recent classes, I’ve been addressing one of the functions of mindfulness, namely its capacity to monitor objects that enter our awareness at each of the sense doors. Mindfulness sees ‘images’, hears ‘sounds’, feels ‘bodily sensations’, knows ‘thoughts’, etc. Ajahn Brahm, a monk based in Australia, likens this function of mindfulness to that of a […]

Recently, I had a new battery installed in my digital watch. And now my continuity of mindfulness feels like it has improved by a power of ten. How is that? The watch has a simple ‘chime’ function that can be set to beep every hour. And whenever I hear the chime, I now take five […]

This week is always an interesting time of year.  Are the resolutions going to plan? Have they crashed and burned? Or are you hunkering down with grim determination to make this year different? Someone recently remarked that the holidays are a ‘study of expectation and disappointment.’ New Year’s resolutions can have that feel, too, if […]

I confess to being a bit behind the ball, what with a 7-day silent retreat stacked right before Christmas stacked right before New Year’s.  What’s a writer of Minutes of Mindfulness to do?? Even now, I still feel myself stumbling out of the deep Silence that held me during my 7-day ‘power-down’. Many of you […]

Wise Samadhi is the crown jewel and final limb of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path to happiness. Within various traditions there is great debate about what constitutes samadhi. The term is often translated as ‘concentration,’ or ‘single-pointedness of attention.’  But, over the years, I’ve come to appreciate interpretations closer to‘stability’ or ‘steadiness’ of mind. If you recall the […]

‘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 […]

In this week’s “Minute”, I want to focus on an important energy that we inevitably encounter in our meditation practice. It’s the same energy we encounter when we procrastinate any worthwhile habit, whether it be regular exercise, a dietary regime, or an artistic venture. This energy is called resistance.  If you’ve ever skipped meditation because you […]

This week, I wanted to offer a very effective recommendation for supporting your meditation practice (or any other  worthwhile habit you want to develop). The Fall season always reminds me of the first days of school: nostalgia mixed with dread.  To manage those disruptive first days, I laid out the next day’s wardrobe (Tough-skins, Izod […]

Without fail, probably the most commonly misunderstood concept in all of Buddhism is the teaching on Non-Self, or Anatta. This teaching asserts that there is no permanent, stable, abiding entity at the center of our existense. Clever students often quip, “Yeah, but if there’s no self, then what’s sitting here right now? Isn’t that a self?” […]

This week, my classes have emphasized opening to the contemplation of dukkha.  Dukkha is the second characteristic common to all conditioned existence, and it is often translated as ‘suffering’ or ‘unsatisfactoriness’. But the literal translation of dukkha is ‘that which is difficult to bear’.   So this flavor of experience covers the entire spectrum of the obvious sorrows such […]

This week’s practice will investigate the experience of impermanence (anicca).   On some level, we all recognize that life is a constant flow of relentless change.  And yet we rarely live in accordance with that Truth. We tend to pursue a strategy for happiness that attempts to impute solidity upon the flux.  We try to stake […]

Last week’s newsletter elicited many positive responses.  Thank you for sharing your struggles with balancing the use of techno-media. Personally, I found it remarkably challenging to pull back from unbridled emailing and news snacking.  But at the same time, that very difficulty only reinforced my hunch that this is something that would dramatically improve the […]

Greetings from the end of Summer! This is a great time to slow down, pause, evaluate and re-assess.  One fruitful theme to reflect upon is your consumption of technology.  I recently heard a Postive Psychologist discuss how studies now show a direct correlation between increased consumption of television and internet with increased symptoms of depression. […]

This week’s practice focuses on the Buddha’s Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness: ultimate realities (dhammas). The Three Marks of Existence: The Buddha taught that all conditioned phenomena (ie. sensory experience) are 1) impermanent, 2) incapable of providing lasting happiness and 3) void of a permanent self. Not seeing these characteristics, we easily enter into an unskillful […]