The smell of cotton candy brings to mind amusement parks and the thrill of being a child. The smell of wet, fallen leaves brings the sad memory of summer’s end and the happy one for some of us of school’s beginning. For most of us, our sense of smell is rather strong and peculiar to [...]
Your daily shower is a perfect opportunity to practice mindfulness. Alone, quiet and away from the normal distractions of your life — even if only for a brief period — it can be a time to observe your habitual patterns of thinking. If you want to develop or deepen a meditation practice, the shower [...]
Letting Go 3:5 …continued from Put It On the Shelf Practicing mindfulness tools during times when we're free of stress and overwhelming feelings, helps us to utilize them when we're under pressure. Right now, as you read this, experiment with putting something on the shelf (see this blog post), even if you’re not particularly [...]
The dictionary offers a simple definition of meditation, but our minds tend to embellish the definition and make it into something mysterious and esoteric. There are many different types of meditation, and the external form of any one of them may be the image we carry in our minds of what meditation is. This [...]
Letting Go 3:4 …continued from Letting Go Whether we live in a bustling metropolis, a crowded suburb, or a sleepy rural area, most of us are always and utterly busy with things to do, places to go, people to see. And there’s never enough time to do it all. Feed the kids, walk the [...]
Those of us who are lucky enough to be able to walk, do so at least a little bit every day. Yet, when the word meditation is tacked onto it and we are invited by a teacher to do some walking meditation, many of us become clumsy and off balance. We may even begin [...]
FAILURE Failure is merely a matter of opinion, time, and attitude. Opinion: Failure is bad. Whenever something happens—especially if it doesn’t conform to what society and we think is the optimal scenario—we judge it as bad and look for someone to blame. The one who usually gets the brunt of it in the [...]
…continued from Money & Spiritual Practice – Part 2 Okay, so you want things. There’s no getting around it and no easy way to discard these desires. It’s time to really look at what you want and why. Often our desire is stimulated when we see what others have. Our envy button gets pushed as [...]
Letting Go 3:3 …continued from Learn to Listen, Listen to Learn Letting go is probably the most difficult concept to grasp and the most challenging action to perform on the Quiet Corner path. Yet without this in our repertoire, all else is for naught. I continue to learn valuable lessons about myself and my world [...]
The holidays, the election, and the uncertainty ahead have many of us worried and out of sorts: I know no better way to return to the center and maintain serenity than meditation. In my case it takes the form of Zazen – “sitting meditation” – and below is a beautiful paean for this practice [...]
