It is essential that you cultivate the twin elements of concentration and inquiry in your meditation. Concentration will bring stability, stillness, and spaciousness; inquiry will bring alertness, vividness, brightness, and clarity. Combined, they will help you to develop creative awareness,…
Drawing attention to stillness, silence, and spaciousness shifts your focus from feeding the insecurity of the ego to connecting with pure being. Anytime you identify with a sense of ‘I’—’I feel something’; ‘I have lost some thing’; ‘I am lost’—you…
Shakyamuni Buddha taught that all material things are subject to laws. Birth, old age, sickness, and death are laws in themselves, and not problems that have to be solved through the power of human beings or through some other power.…
Although there are many different descriptions of the enlightened mind, there is one reference point of understanding that illuminates them all: the final uprooting of greed, hatred, and ignorance. —Joseph Goldstein, “The End of Suffering”
The Buddha taught that sexual activity is part and parcel of craving (kama-tanha, the craving for sensuality), described in the second noble truth as the cause of suffering, a source of clinging and attachment (upadana, or attachment to sensual pleasure),…
Being alone means you are established firmly in the here and the now and you become aware of what is happening in the present moment. You use your mindfulness to become aware of every feeling, every perception you have. You’re…
It’s one thing to practice to get some relief from anxiety, to calm the mind—all of which is certainly legitimate—but it’s practicing Zen on a very superficial level. From the Zen Buddhist point of view this is a very low…
When you pursue awakening, it’s not going to lead to disappointment. Quite the contrary, it goes wildly beyond your expectations, wildly beyond your hopes. —Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Power of Conviction”
Nature is the great teacher. Shakyamuni went to the jungle to find its teachings, Moses up the mountain, Jesus to the desert, and Bodhidharma and Muhammad to their caves. We tend to forget this, so it is important to have…
If we learn to keep our mind quiet through meditation, to just stay present with our feelings, to connect with our heart, to let go of the story lines, and to directly feel all the unpleasant sensations associated with our…