Life sometimes takes such surprising twists and turns that we can either be thrown off balance and never recover, or we can be led to new and exciting adventures and possibilities, especially if we are awake enough to notice and brave enough to take advantage. My life is now entering a new phase of wonder [...]
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 [...]
Expect nothing. It cannot be stressed too strongly or expressed too often. Expect nothing. If you can simply contemplate these two words and practice them day and night, there’s no need to say or do more. Expect nothing. Morning on the Hudson Something as simple and innocuous as waiting for a promised [...]
Indeed, we all have suffered frustration, and sometimes we let it carry us into a state of anxiety and depression. From experience, we know that that state of mind never relieves the frustration; it only aggravates it. Let’s take a moment to look at the most common source of frustration and then how we might [...]
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 [...]
Faith Even if you take all the suggestions in my books and this blog, you are bound to come up against a wall now and then. You may sometimes wonder exactly what you are doing, as nothing seems to be happening. And at times throughout this quiet-corner process (there’s that term again!), you may question [...]
When I, a student of Dharma, Look at the real form of the universe, All is the never-failing manifestation Of the mysterious truth of Tathagata. In any event, in any moment, and in any place, None can be other than the marvelous revelation Of its glorious light. This realization made our ancestral teachers and [...]
Letting Go 3:2 …continued from Becoming Willing to Let Go! Take the Cotton Out of Your Ears and Put it in Your Mouth If we want to hone our listening skills so we can hear our inner voice, we must also learn to listen to the outer world. If we are not good listeners, we [...]
Acceptance Through each step of the process of finding, facing, and using a quiet corner, you will learn a great deal about yourself. The first thing you might learn is how you deal with the process. While there is some instant gratification in three-part, three-breath breathing, most of the lasting and strengthening rewards of spending [...]
The idea, or rather the reality, of an ego is paradoxical. On the one hand, it gives us a healthy supply of self-esteem, which in turn provides us with the necessary energy to face the world and its inherent storms. On the other hand, it can drive us so deep into self-consciousness that all we [...]
