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 […]
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Greasing the Groove
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? […]
A Mind of Winter
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 […]
Meditation Resolution
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 […]
Wise Concentration
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 […]
Wise Mindfulness
‘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 […]
Wise Effort
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 […]
Wise Livelihood
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 […]
Wise Action
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 […]
Wise Speech
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 […]
Wise Intention
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 […]
Wise View
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 […]
No Matter What!
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 […]
Seeding The Tip Jar
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 […]
To Self Or Not To Self
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 […]
Dukkha, Dukkha, Dukkha
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’. […]
Investigating Impermanence
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 […]
Nudging the Unplug
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 […]
Mindfulness and the Internet
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 […]
The Three Marks of Existence
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 […]
The Flavor of Feeling
This week we opened our field of awareness to include feeling tones, or vedana (in Pali). ‘Contemplation of feelings is a meditation practice of considerable potential. This potential is based on the simple […]