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Mindfulness Matters

T. S. Eliot gave us these lines: I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the…

Watch this video by Julian Baggini, author of the Ego Trick. The answer to the question is yes and no, mostly no — there is no real self if you are looking for some core, essence, or unchanging “permanent truth” that is “me”. What is there then? The self is a process not a thing. This…

This is the Exquisite Mind Studio in Burlington, Vermont as captured on a sunny day. One of the members of our community, Bruce Post, took this photo and called it “Waiting.” The pregnant emptiness that precedes the group sitting. We spend much of our lives waiting, breathing in the transition spaces between things. Or we…

Winter has been relatively mild here in Northern Vermont, yet winter nonetheless. It’s cold. Often below freezing. The pond near my home supports ice fishing. The mountains are snow covered. When it is cold we may shiver. Simple as that. When it is hot, we may sweat. Simple as that. We can use the cold…

In a recent post I mentioned “mistaken views” as a source of all dissatisfaction, anguish, and suffering. In this post, I’ll expand on Right View — one of the Noble Eightfold Path. “Right” is, perhaps, a misleading translation because it implies “correct” or “should.” Skillful could be substituted and might carry less of that connotation.…

I will be conducting my annual workshop at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies the weekend of 17-19 February 2012. I’ll be teaching the Buddha’s dharma through metaphors. This summer I wrote an article for the BCBS online publication Full Moon Insight Journal where I explored the bold statement that what we regard as self…

Mid-January marks the celebration of Mahayana Buddhist New Year celebration (although many Mahayana Buddhist such as Japenese Zen, celebrate the New Year on December 31st). The New Year is a funny holiday for Buddhists. When you invite mindfulness into your life and endeavor to practice it always, every moment holds the same potential as the…

Novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco said (as quoted on The Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor) noted that atoms are mostly space. He pointed out one of my favorite and fascinating facts. If you could somehow remove all the space in atoms, the universe would collapse to the size of a bowling ball. What we take to…

Check out my feature article in the Buddhism section of Beliefnet. 

In our culture of must have, right now, or else I’m gonna freak out, renunciation is a dirty word. Renunciation means giving up something and to give up something means that I have less; and if I have less then somehow I am less than. How did we get to this formulation? What if instead…
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