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Mindfulness Matters

Montaigne said he preferred the “company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.” This bit of wisdom applies to the path of Buddhist meditation too. The smarter we are the more we may place obstacles in our spiritual path.  The mind wants to grasp the pratice intellectually, to understand it, and…

My friend and fellow author, Laurel Saville, just wrote an interesting piece on solitude for Single Minded Women entitled Stay, Fetch, Lick: Love Me, Love My Dog. Literally.  Her musings on gender-based perceptions of solitude got me thinking about one of my favorite quotes from Rilke that was the basis for my metaphor, The Guardianship of…

It’s Stress Reduction Sunday. Read my weekly post in the Connecticut Watchdog, This week’s entry Mindfulness and Yoga: A Potent Combination for Combatting Stress Today there are 20 million practitioners of yoga in the United States today. My hometown of Burlington, Vermont sports a dizzying and wonderful array of yoga studios, and your town probably does as well.…

A recent article in Science (reviewed in the New York Times) lends support to what practitioners of mindfulness already know. First, our minds wander a lot. According to the study about 47% of the time (and the percentage of wandering varied considerably by activity). Second we are happier when concentrated on what we are doing.…

I met Jack Kornfield at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center in the late-1980s. And while I only had a brief opportunity to learn from him, I’ve always held a fondness for his writings and teachings. As you will see from this video, he is warm, approachable, and intelligent.  In this video he provides the basic…

Buddhism is a relatively new term, coined in the 19th century by Western “Orientalists” studying the cultures and traditions. Mu Soeng points out that, “Buddhism is not a unitary phenomenon.” It might be more accurate to say there are many Buddhist traditions that trace their origin back to the Buddha — Siddhartha Gotama — some…

According to ecologist Eric Berlow in this 3-minute talk, complex is not necessarily complicated. This sounds to me like the human brain — the most complex thing in the known universe. What that brain does can be complicated — if we are in the grips of habitual thinking or it can be simplicity when we…

Pema Chödrön said, “Since impermanence defies our attempts to hold onto anything, outer pleasures can never bring lasting joy. Even when we manage to get short-term gratification, it doesn’t heal our longing for happiness; it only enhances our shenpa (getting hooked). As my teacher Dzigar Kongtrul once said, “Trying to find lasting happiness from relationships or possessions…

It’s Stress Reduction Sunday. Read my weekly post in the Connecticut Watchdog, This week’s entry Strategies To Deal With Difficult Bosses and Other Problem People What Does Mindfulness Have to Offer? Part Two There are a variety of scenarios we might encounter with a difficult boss or co-worker. I recognize there are situations that may be…

Thank you Ram Dass. It’s good to hear from you again. For many of us, Ram Dass has been an integral part of our spiritual path. I first became aware of him while in college. I read The Only Dance There Is. Ram Dass was an inspirational role model — psychologist turned yogi. No doubt,…
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