Do yourself a favor and you might just do a favor for everyone around you. How is that possible? Simple. Research shows that you can cultivate positive mental states by slowing down your activity and paying attention to your surroundings.
Am I the kind of person who … ?
Am I the kind of person who … ?
How would you finish this sentence? The kind of person who … Runs marathons? Eats vegan? Listens to Beyonce? Drives a Prius? Meditates?
The activity that completes the sentence – run, eat, etc. – almost seems less important than the sense of membership that comes with it. Am I that kind of person?
No Laughing Matter
Comics speak to me. I feel like Rat sits on one shoulder, Goat (or Uncle Duke or Dagwood or Lucy …) sits on the other. They go back and forth and I’m caught in the middle. One side tells me how the “spiritual journey” might improve my life by making me kinder, more patient and even-keeled, more helpful. The other tells me not to be such a pushover.
Thoughts, even Rat-type thoughts, are not really a problem. We are, by our very nature, thinkers. The “Problem of Thinking” is not that we think (We are thinkers! How can one not think?), but rather the fact that we can so easily get lost in our thoughts. When this happens, thought becomes a substitute for experience. You could even say thought becomes a substitute for life.
So enjoy your life. Enjoy your thoughts. An entire spiritual journey occurs each time you experience even one thought as “just a thought.” This task is not insurmountable.
The Dog Days of Summer
With the temperature crawling towards 100 (it’s still June !!!), let’s enjoy a moment with fellow meditator Wally. Like others, he may discover unexpected benefits.
Belly Breathe with Elmo
Suffering from PSSD? (post-semester stress disorder) Having trouble making the transition to summer? Check out this video. (Please don’t ask me how Elmo is able to fog the screen. It’s a Muppet Mystery.)
Unattended thoughts
Inspired by a recent trip to Ashland, Oregon.
Unattended thoughts will be given an espresso and a puppy.
1 millimeter wider
From Stephen Batchelor‘s lecture on “The Second Noble Task: Letting Go of Reactivity” (Series: Being Completely Human, Part 5, Upaya Zen Center)
“The practice of awareness, or mindfulness, or zazen, whatever it is, is to somehow seek to always have a frame of mind that is at least one millimeter (1 mm) wider than our reactivity.”
The Science of Compassion
Geshe Thupten Jinpa is a former Tibetan Buddhist monk, the principal English translator for the Dalai Lama (since 1985), and a Cambridge-educated scholar (BA, PhD). He spoke in Kaul Auditorium this past weekend as the guest of Maitripa College to speak about his new book, “A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives.” He also spoke with OPB’s Think Out Loud about The Science of Compassion (11 May 2015). You can listen to this interview by following the The Science … link.
Resources for troubling times
Troubling times. They come in all shapes and sizes: the personal – a missed exam, a fractured friendship – and the global – a civil war, a devastating earthquake. How does one find the courage, the enthusiasm, and the joy, to go forward when confronted by troubles beyond our control?
Writing in the Tricycle blog (“In The Spirit of Service”), well-known author and meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, describes a path for cultivating an open heart that combines service and meditation and service. On the topic of meditation, she describes practices for cultivating mental states that “foster a connection to our own inherent capacity for wisdom and love. They put us in contact with a world beyond the moment-to-moment fixations of our mind.”
Life is full of distractions
“What is this?” asks a zen koan. I often feel that way about meditation. What is this? Is meditation so different from the rest of my life? If it truly is, if meditation is the life arena where focus and attention reign, and the rest of is ruled by the demons of distraction, where should I live?