One of the first things I was taught when I ventured into Buddhist practice was to be mindful of mind. This is no easy task. One quickly discovers that  thoughts are enticing, alluring, and in no time at all drag you off into a whole scenario, when the intent was simply to let the thoughts drift by like clouds. Continue reading “Mindful Modes of Thinking” »

Meditation by waterfalls

I’ve noticed a common thread in talking to many new meditators and Buddhist practitioners. People want to know how meditation is going to make them happy. How long do you have to meditate to transcend to the next plane? How long do you have to meditate before getting high.  How does all this meditation get rid of my suffering?!!!! Continue reading “Meditation Magic” »

Accept life on its terms and it becomes a lot more interesting. Keep believing there is more, and you are on a chase for your own tail that takes you nowhere. Yet, many of us, possibly most of us, end up on spiritual journeys that take up years, sometimes decades of our lives. Continue reading “The Selfish Circle of the Spiritual Quest” »

Ban Offshore Drilling

Buddhism has a reputation for being passive, and there are good reasons for this. All that meditation  and mindfulness we do appears passive.  And in the beginning many of us do have to mindfully hold back reactions, and refrain from falling into old active patterns that used to get us into trouble. But there is a time for apparent passiveness, and a time to act, a time to be engaged. Continue reading “Engaged Buddhism Needed” »

I am surprised by the number of people I meet in person and online who have never stopped to consider the nature of their thoughts or beliefs. What seems to be much more common is that people’s minds are dragging them around, back and forth through life experiences, and they assume that all those thoughts and beliefs that arise are correct, important, and worth defending. Continue reading “Exploring the Mental Experience” »

I’m not a political person, and I tend to avoid anything that takes sides on social and political issues. For most of my life, I’ve just gone along and done my own thing, no matter whether it was “politically correct”, socially acceptable, or considered “normal.” But in the last few years, I’m finding I have a growing concern over the religious views in this country. Continue reading “Rising Religious Concerns” »

One of the most useful skills you can get out of meditation is the ability to see and experience objectively how you label patterns of thinking. Soon you realize you have a lot of incorrect labeling in your speech for your views, and you notice it in others. You also start to catch lazy thinking, especially regarding what we know versus what we accept, versus what we believe. Continue reading “What You Know, Accept, or Believe” »

When the Buddha spoke of not-self, he literally meant that we create what appears to be self but really is not self at all. We do this selfing in a variety of ways, and then we create identity for ourselves and call it me. Continue reading “The Many Me’s” »

2008 was full of surprises! Many of those events or situations were not exactly welcome or wished for and some were. And in all of that was a lot of learning and growth, and thankfully I made some interesting discoveries: Continue reading “Sitting Comfortably with Uncertainty” »

In my early years, my grandfather would sit in his big green chair and lecture someone until he was in a full-blown tirade over the topic. It was the family joke that once he was in that state, you could get up leave the room, go into the kitchen, make yourself lunch, and return to find him still spewing, without a clue that you’d ever left his presence. He was literally lost and in another world of his own making. Continue reading “Engaged or Lost in Conversation” »