meditation

Ideas for practice and teaching

Practice is not about overcoming human problems. It’s not about becoming serene and transcendent. It’s about embracing our lives as they really are, and understanding at every point how deep and profound and gorgeous everything is—even the suffering, even the difficulty. So we forgive ourselves for our limitations, and we forgive this world for its

I started to meditate in a different way. I let go of the idea of what meditation was supposed to be. So I would sit down and let my experience simply be, in a very deep way. I started to let go of trying to control my experience. That became the beginning of discovering for myself what True Meditation is. From that point on, that shift - moving... See more

“... This aliveness is always here. We don’t have to work to get it. It is ever-present. Seeking enlightenment is a form of postponement, postponing what can only be realized now ...” ~ Joan Tollifson

Joan Tollifson • Can We Embrace "Yes Buts?" Painting The Sidewalk Joan Tollifson - Stillness Speaks

Allowing and encouraging a quality of play and experimentation in practice is vital, and vitalizing. I can’t emphasize this enough. Usually that’s how we learn best as human beings, and it keeps things from getting rigid and feeling heavy.

Rob Burbea • Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising

When we say to ourselves, “This feels bad. I need a way to fix this!” that’s the very moment when the most growth and promise lies at our fingertips. But in order to access it, we have to do the opposite of what we want to do. We have to resist the urge to analyze or find a solution or protect ourselves from our emotions.

We have to stop and feel... See more

Heather Havrilesky • Tolerating Unknowns Will Make You Stronger

After all our futile efforts to transform our ordinary minds into idealized, spiritual minds, we discover the fundamental paradox of practice is that leaving everything alone is itself what is ultimately transformative.

Barry Magid • Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any... See more

Tara Brach • Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of R.A.I.N.

Ordinary means that there is no need to add or take away from what is going on in the mind. Each portion of life has the whole of life. There is nothing wrong with what is in the mind except the sense that something is wrong. In this way simplicity turns to a form of compassion.

John Tarrant • Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

Can you find where this moment comes from or where it goes home to?