meditation
Ideas for practice and teaching
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
... See moreAfter 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.
It is as if we lived in a world where only diamonds could be used to put out a fire. In this alternate universe, fires are easy to start and break out everywhere, but water, which is as common there as here, won’t put them out. Only diamonds, which are just as rare as on Earth, will put out a fire. Only a very few unique individuals are capable of
... See moreIt’s still possible to get caught up in habitual patterns of the thinking mind and the compulsive body. But eventually, there is a remembering, a coming home. The mind stops, the body quiets, the heart opens. When this happens, in that natural stillness and wakefulness, everything is complete and nothing more is needed. There is no me, no
... See moreOne of the virtues of meditation is that it allows you to tolerate or even enjoy such between moments, to befriend the material your mind throws to the surface when it is not otherwise occupied by chasing something or trying to improve its condition.
Can you find where this moment comes from or where it goes home to?