Meditation Is Ridiculously, Amazingly Simple

If we just look at what’s really going on with any meditation technique, it’s so simple as to be unbelievable. Enjoy the flow of your breathing. Notice the flow of thoughts, emotions, and sensations through your body, heart, and mind. Enjoy the beauty of an internal sound—a mantra—that to you feels like the song of… Continue reading

Enriching Our Conception of Mindfulness

Let’s enrich our conception of what mindfulness is. In the ancient languages, the term would carry a meaning more like heartfulness, sense-fullness, gratefulness, wonderfulness, soulfulness. “Mindfulness” means way more than the English word “mind.” In Sanskrit, manas has a wide range of meanings—“mind” in its widest sense, including all the mental powers, intelligence, perception, sense,… Continue reading

Welcome the Wildness: or, Uncovering the True Heart of Yoga and Meditation

Every day, we have to do the impossible. We have to submit to the magic reboot of sleep and then get up and line up all our selves into a unified being and get on with it. Nearly every day, new qualities of our selves come online to join in with all the others. This… Continue reading

An Introduction to the Death or Loss of a Parent

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up.” —Anne Lamott Why is the death… Continue reading

An Introduction to Rest

Some people harbor the illusion that rest is a luxury they do not have time for, but the reality is that rest is a necessity. The fast pace of modern living can cause people to think they must always be working on one task or another to remain a productive member of society, but the… Continue reading

An Introduction to Science and Spirituality

Taken for granted in Western culture for more than a hundred years, the dualistic view of the universe—the split between mind and matter, body and spirit, faith and reason, essentially between science and spirituality—is now being fundamentally questioned by Western science and religion alike. Why did the split occur in the first place, what has… Continue reading

An Introduction to Raising Sons

In a post #MeToo world, many parents of young boys are anxious to find a better way forward for their sons. Luckily, there are many things parents can do to foster a positive environment in which their sons can flourish and thrive, and be proud of who they grow up to be. How do I… Continue reading

An Introduction to Social Media Addiction

“Time,” to paraphrase a Carl Sandburg poem, “is the only coin you have, so spend it wisely.” What constitutes wise use of one’s time can be viewed as a subjective matter, but many of us would agree that spending large chunks of time to feed an unhealthy addiction would not fall under the “wise use”… Continue reading

An Introduction to Relationship with Money

What do we think about when we think about our relationship with money? The details will be different for everyone, but some of the more common questions people ask themselves about money include: Do I have enough? Am I earning enough? How can I get more? Do I enjoy doing what I do for a… Continue reading

An Introduction to Non-Duality

At the core of one of the most important Zen Buddhist texts, the Heart Sutra, is this declaration: Form does not differ from emptiness,emptiness does not differ from form.That which is form is emptiness,that which is emptiness form.The same is true of feelings,perceptions, impulses, consciousness. One of the most famous expressions of the concept of… Continue reading