Practicing Loving Speech

The Fourth Mindfulness Training is concerned with practicing loving speech and deep listening. A practitioner commits to speaking from her or his heart with complete honesty, sincerity, and authenticity. In these days when we have an absence of loving speech from many political candidates and people in charge of hiding the truth of what happened […]

Nurturing Practices

This article is a summary of a wonderful dharma talk on nurturing practices given by Sister Mai Nghiem, a French nun and Dharma Teacher in the Plum Village Tradition. The dharma talk was given on April 29th, 2016 at the Earth Holder Retreat at the Deer Park Monastery last week. I was especially moved by […]

Mindfulness Trainings

The Five Mindfulness Trainings of the Plum Village Tradition and the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing are guiding wisdom for how we can be mindful in our daily lives. They were written by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) and modified over the years by Thay and the monks and nuns in […]

Join Support Groups

The sixth of the 7 Principles of Mindfulness in Healing from the book, Healing with the 7 Principles of Mindfulness is to reach out to others. An important component of reaching out to others is to join support groups. Here is why. Support groups are wonderful for your healing experience because you are able to […]

Paying Attention to Others

This lesson from Sharon Salzberg is about paying attention to others. She tells that when people give us a gift or annoy us we do pay attention. In normal circumstances, we listen to each other almost halfheartedly. They fail to make an impression on us and we fail to listen properly. One advantage of participating […]

Engaging in Deep Listening

Dear Brothers and Sisters, I hope you are all well and warm on this winter morning. I know that with all of the hatred, anger and violence that is manifesting in our world, we are all looking deeply at how to engage effectively so that we can be of some help.  I would like to […]

Building a Beloved Community

For the past six years, I have been building a beloved community. The community is the Mindfulness in Healing sangha which meets on Wednesday nights at the Pine Street Clinic in San Anselmo, California from 7:00 to 8:30 PM. This beloved community has changed a lot over the years. My original concept when it began […]

Deep Listening with Thich Nhat Hanh

Aren’t we lucky today? Yes we are! We have a video from Super Soul Sunday in which Oprah Winfrey interviews Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. In this video, we will learn about compassionate listening or, what we call in our sangha, deep listening with Thich Nhat Hanh (known as Thay by his followers) and its […]

5 Questions to Ask At the Dinner Table

These words of wisdom come from Dr. Anil Gupta through Mindvalley. I am happy to share this with you and your children. Dr. Gupta suggests 5 questions to ask at the dinner table. Your relationships, above all else, determine how happy you feel on a day-to-day basis. The quickest and most effective way of improving […]

Embracing Anger

These words of wisdom from Mark Epstein in Tricycle Daily Dharma teach us about sitting with anger, or, as Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) teaches, embracing anger. Can you imagine a more explosive situation than what is going on in Israel today? With the recent war in Gaza started by Hamas with their bombing […]