I just read about Cheri Huber‘s delightful gratitude practice. This is certainly a gratitude practice you can do. Here is what Cheri says: Spend one week saying only kind, caring things to yourself. Say thank you at least ten times an hour, direct five toward yourself and five to the world at large. Compliment yourself […]
Meditation Changes Your Brain
Harvard neuroscientist, Sara Lazar, reveals how meditation changes your brain. In a report by the Washington Post, Brigid Schulte interviewed Sara Lazar and asked her a bunch of questions. The first question was, “Why did you start looking at meditation and mindfulness and the brain?” Sara replied the she tried yoga because of a running […]
Just Pay Appropriate Attention
Here is another quote from Matthew Kelly, this time from his book, Perfectly Yourself: 9 Lessons for Enduring Happiness. He is teaching us to just pay appropriate attention. He calls it “just do the next right thing.” Appropriate attention is an important Buddhist concept that came down to us as yoniso manasikara. It implies paying […]
Taking Action on Global Warming
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, known as Thay by his followers, has been an activist more than sixty years and he has been talking about taking action on global warming and climate change for as long as I can remember. As early as 1985, I heard him say, “If the West stops drinking alcohol by […]
Maintaining the Silence
In yesterday’s article, we learned about Entering the Silence from Matthew Kelly. Today, we are going to learn about maintaining the silence from Joseph Campbell. In The Power of Myth, he writes about entering the silence: “This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so […]
Entering the Silence with Purpose
Entering the silence with purpose is just what we do when we have a daily meditation practice. The silence comes between our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Matthew Kelly, in his book, The Rhythm of Life: Living Every Day with Passion and Purpose, has this to say about entering the silence with purpose: “Everything great in […]
Let the Thought or Feeling Go
These words of wisdom from Lama Surya Das teach us how to let the thought or feeling go. This works especially well when we allow ourselves to breathe in and breathe out and remove the object from our mind. This is reminiscent of Linji‘s directive to remove the object. The object, of course, is the […]
Get-What-You-Want Buddhism
Jan Nattier is a scholar of Early Indian Buddhism, Early Mahayana Buddhism, and Chinese Buddhist Translation and author of A Few Good Men (Studies in the Buddhist Traditions). She was a professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University and held the post of the Shinnyōen Consulting Professor (Buddhist Studies) […]
Give As If There Is Nothing To Lose
These words of wisdom from Sallie Tisdale, author of Women of the Way: Discovering 2,500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom advises us to give as if there is nothing to lose. And really, what do we have to lose? All of our urgently felt needs for security vanish in light of our ultimate fate. Seeing the […]
Studies of Meditation Practices
Kelly McGonigal is one of the most brilliant young neruoscientists of our day. Her work at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University is drawing huge numbers of people to look at her studies of meditation practices. Her life-long headaches led her into yoga and meditation and now she […]
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