All You Need To Do
Just understand your mind: how it works, how attachment and desire arise, how ignorance arises, where emotions come from. It is sufficient to know the nature of
Category Buddhism
After the First Step
Free of stress and comfortable are two very different things. I think a lot of times people come to meditation to get more comfortable, and a lot of teachers are happy to teach them just that. But if you’re looking…
Action Without a Cause
True mindfulness has arisen when there is only the action but no doer. —Ayya Khema, “No Satisfaction”
Act for the Benefit of Yourself and Others
Before acting, one should reflect, “Is this for the benefit of myself and others?” In the middle of an action, one should reflect, “Is what I am doing for the benefit of myself and others?” And after any action, “Is…
Accessing our Inner Strength
Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften…
Abandoning the Transactional Mindset
Even in close relationships, spending time with a friend, even while helping others or doing other good works, if your attention is on what you are feeling, on what you are getting out of it, then you see these relationships…
Abandoning Futile Endeavors
To look for total satisfaction in oneself is a futile endeavor. Since everything changes from moment to moment, where can self and where can satisfaction be found? Yet these are two things that the whole world is looking for and…
Abandoning Distraction
Even on a small scale in daily life situations, such as when we feel bored or ill at ease, instead of trying to avoid these feelings by staying busy or buying another fancy gadget, we learn to look more clearly…
A Wider Identity
The force needed to empower wisdom is compassion. Both wisdom and compassion shift our sense of identity away from ourselves toward the wider human, biotic, and cosmic community to which we belong. —Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Need of the Hour”
A Voice from the Outside
The recluse appears to be useless. He’s off in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing. And yet what he’s able to see because of his doing nothing is important for everyone. It would be nice if the shakers and the…