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Mindfulness Matters

This past summer I stood in the reference library at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies staring at the Pali Canon. It occupies an entire bookshelf, standing 2.5 by 8 feet tall, comprised of 140 volumes on six and one half shelves.  I’d tell you how many pages there were, but I can’t read the…

A life that doesn’t provide radiant happiness may not be worth living according to Skrikumar Rao. Happiness is not from what we have or what we do. He claims that happiness is in our DNA. That claim may seem counterintuitive. Watch on for a surprising explanation of how we undermine our genetic inheritance towards happiness. …

It’s foliage season in Northern Vermont. Fabulous displays of color across the Green Mountains. As their name implies, they are covered with trees that are throwing off color; wild screaming death throes. I love foliage time and I also love the lush jungle green of summer and even love the bareness of mud season and…

Naomi Morris wrote an article for the L. A. Times entitled “Fully experiencing the present: a practice for everyone, religious or not.” The article focuses on the pioneering mindfulness work of Jon Kabat-Zinn (featured here on Mindfulness Matters a couple of times). Jon has taught mindfulness through Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction as a secularized practice of training…

In an age when the work week enroaches more and more into the hours of each day and even reaches its hand into weekends, holidays, and vacations the notion arises that we need to have good work-life “balance.” I would like to suggest, however, that work-life balance is a myth, and a dangerous one at…

This is the last installment of the Charter for Compassion talks with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (the Imam at the center of the controversy over the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero). He gives a brief overview of the Muslim faith in the context of compassion.  I won’t get into the particulars of that controversy;…

We all learned “Stop, Drop, and Roll” in fire safety. This mnemonic helps to avert panic and the proliferation of the fire. In fact, when done correctly you can put the fire out limiting its destructive impact.  In the Buddha’s Fire Sermon, he warned, “Monks, everything is burning.  And what is burning? Monks, the eye…

It’s Stress Reduction Sunday. Read my weekly post in the Connecticut Watchdog, This week’s entry, Mindfulness :: How To Interrupt Cycles of Stress Overload In previous entries we’ve explored the nature of stress and how paying attention to the present moment through mindfulness can be an effective antidote to stress. Today we’ll explore how lower levels of…

As the mid-term elections approach, political rhetoric is ramping up and along with it the usual fervor, apathy, distortion, and promulgation of hope (mostly false hope, I’m afraid). Here is a mindful perspective on politics from renown  Buddhist author and editor, Melvin McLeod. Melvin McLeod edits the volume Mindful Politics (Wisdom, 2006). “Politics is really…

The psychotherapist Connelly turned to William Carlos Williams to elucidate the “poetry” of living. Williams said, “The underlying meaning of all [our patients] want to tell us an have always failed to communicate is the poem, the poem which their lives are being lived to realize” The philosopher Suzanne Langer reminds us that a “Poem has…
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