Sublime

The fifth one is called “taming the mind.” This has to do with the importance of a basic attitude of friendliness.

As far as the discipline of mind is concerned, you should rest your mind in basic goodness and appreciate that. Appreciating goodness brings a sense of celebration. Your world might be falling apart, you might be in tremendous financial debt, your husband or wife might be leaving you, or you might be living in a depressed neighborhood where the pol

Step One. Acknowledge that you’re hooked. Step Two. Pause, take three conscious breaths, and lean in. Lean in to the energy. Abide with it. Experience it fully. Taste it. Touch it. Smell it. Get curious about it. How does it feel in your body? What thoughts does it give birth to? Become very intimate with the itch and urge of shenpa and keep breath

It does take coming to know your anger, coming to know your self-deprecation, coming to know your craving and wanting, coming to know your boredom, and making friends with those things.

Here are some rules of thumb that might help you navigate whatever practice you are trying out.

1. Criticizing, judging, or assessing yourself isn’t virtue. It doesn’t help in meditation; it’s just more noise. And if you are criticizing, judging, or assessing yourself, don’t criticize that, and so on, until you wear out and compassion enters.


2. Criticizin

When things fall apart and we can’t get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when the whole thing is just not working and we don’t know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to c

We cling to a fixed idea of who we are and it cripples us. Nothing and no one is fixed.