A lot of the time we’re thinking and that isn’t always good or helpful. Thinking (unlike thoughtful attention) is about constructing: a future, a past, another person – or oneself. It’s often about creating an alternative to the direct expe…
Can we allow ourselves to perceive the body as a process? This process is the four elements working together, building, forming, falling apart, over and over again. When we do this, it becomes more difficult to identify with the body as bei…
One of the striking things, given that this is the Buddha’s best- known discourse on loving-kindness, is that it is about a third of the way into the sutta before the Buddha even mentions loving- kindness. I think this is great, in the sens…
Everything is created by our minds. The eyes see images, the ears hear sounds, the nose smells aromas, the tongue tastes flavors, the body feels sensations, and the heart experiences emotions. But the mind is aware of all these things. It k…
Under the veneer of contentment, we are too busy to see what we are doing, too restless to stop or to keep our minds still. It isn’t just a shifting around so that we can find the right posture or the right set of conditions in life; it’s a…
When we first look closely at the human mind, we may experience suffering from our approach to the practice itself. We may struggle to make peace with ourselves. We may experience tiredness or confusion. We may suffer – without understandin…
Training your mind is like training yourself to master a sport. Part of the training is focused in the practice sessions, i.e. what you’re doing right here as you’re meditating or as you’re doing walking meditation–the skills you want to wo…
With a little bit more practice, you find that you can stay here, stay balanced here more solidly than you could floating around in your old habits. Be as immediate as possible with each breath. Sense it as soon as it comes in, as soon as i…
We have all the different sense organs: the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, body, and mind. If you review those, you’ll see that there’s a particular logic in that sequence. The phenomena that arise in the eye are distant. There’s space…
The Buddha delineated four successive stages of awakening. We don’t have to awaken all at once, so it’s not too overwhelming…Maybe some people do have an instant or spontaneous awakening, but I think that even if they do, that experience st…