The Three Marks of Existence | April 15, 2015   As your mindfulness develops, your resentment for the change, your dislike for the unpleasant experiences, your greed for the pleasant experiences, and the notion of selfhood will be replaced by the deeper awareness of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness. This knowledge of reality in your experience […]

Not an Easy Fit | April 13, 2015   Whether on the cushion or in the laboratory, Buddhism and science resist an easy fit. A good deal of Buddhism—even including, ironically, the very notion of buddhahood—doesn’t lend itself to scientific validation or materialist empiricism. Consequently, to make Buddhism fit with what is perceived to be […]

„What if our religion was each other If our practice was our life If prayer, our words What if the temple was the Earth If forests were our church If holy water – the rivers, lakes , and ocean What if meditation was our relationships If the teacher was life If wisdom was self-knowledge If […]

“What did the Dalai Lama say to the hot dog vendor? ‘Make me one with everything.’ It’s a joke—and a pretty good one—but there’s more to it than that. Becoming one with everything by seeing through separateness and rigidity is the heart of what I call inter-meditation. Inter-meditation means meditating with—the practice and art of […]

One thing does not lead to another. We don’t practice awareness and then get silence, peace, and spaciousness, though it can seem that way. We practice awareness and we are practicing silence, peace, and spaciousness. The process itself is the outcome. And with attention on thisherenow we recognize it in glimpses, in places we had […]

There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don’t disturb your mind with seeking. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“By now, you should realize, or shall we say be aware of, several themes running throughout this book. One of these themes is awareness itself. You cannot change what you are not aware of, and that truth is no more important than in the world of self-improvement. We need to be more aware of what […]

“Anne Robertson, a Methodist pastor, writer, and executive director of the Massachusetts Bible Society, explains how the Greek origins of the words happiness and joy hold important meaning for us today. She explains that the Greek word for happiness is Makarios, which was used to describe the freedom of the rich from normal cares and […]

“It took me three years to whittle these definitions and concepts from a decade of interviews. Let’s take a look. Love: We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, […]

“Practicing courage, compassion, and connection in our daily lives is how we cultivate worthiness. The key word is practice. Mary Daly, a theologian, writes, “Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.” The same is true for […]