The House of 1000 Mirrors
The House of 1000 Mirrors - A Japanese folktale Long ago in a small, far away village, there was place known as the House of 1000 Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house.... Continue Reading →
Discerning Awareness
Excerpt from the book ' Emotional Awareness' A conversation between The Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman Discerning Awareness “Ekman : Let us consider an example that is relevant to the issue we have been discussing : a pediatric oncology nurse who works eight hours a day with young children who are dying of cancer and their... Continue Reading →
When Things Fall Apart
I had always thought of myself as a flexible, obliging person who was well liked by almost everyone. I'd been able to carry this illusion throughout most of my life. During my early years at the abbey, I discovered that I had been living in some kind of misunderstanding. It wasn't that I didn't have... Continue Reading →
How to fail
If there is one skill that is not stressed very much, but is really needed, it is knowing how to fail. There is a Samuel Beckett quote that goes “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” That quote is what will help you more than anything else in the next year, the next ten years, the... Continue Reading →
Peace is right here
Some people find the teachings I offer helpful because I encourage them to be kind to themselves, but this does not mean pampering our neurosis. The kindness that I learned from my teachers, and that I wish so much to convey to other people, is kindness toward all qualities of our being. The qualities that... Continue Reading →
The lion’s roar
The Lion's Roar is the fearless proclamation that any state of mind, any circumstance, any part of ourselves, including the most difficult emotions, is a workable situation, a reminder in the practice of meditation. We can realise that the chaotic situations must not be rejected, nor must we regard them as regressive, as a return... Continue Reading →
Make a True Home of Your Love
Every one of us is seeking emotional intimacy. We want to have real communication, mutual understanding, communion. In the light of Buddhist practice, you have to listen to your own suffering. There is suffering inside of you, and there is suffering inside of the other person. If you do not listen to your own suffering,... Continue Reading →
Religion is the opiate of the people
“Religions are metaphorical systems that give us bigger containers in which to hold our lives. A spiritual life allows us to move beyond the ego into something more universal. Religious experience carries us outside of clock time into eternal time. We open ourselves into something more complete and beautiful. This bigger vista is perhaps the... Continue Reading →
The highest confidence
"There seems to be two different styles of confidence: The security-minded confidence that whatever you do you are going to achieve something out of in order to benefit yourself; and confidence in the sense of carelessness, that you are allowing things to happen by themselves and not trying to secure situations of any kind. The... Continue Reading →
Trying to keep it together
The majority of stress in our life seems to come from trying to keep it all together. We stress daily about jobs,money, loved ones, our future and so on - however when we look upon our life we realise that things come together and then fall apart...and then come back together again only to fall... Continue Reading →
Life will break you
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.... Continue Reading →
Training in mindfulness, we learn to be aware of our own mental states without being caught in them. This capacity for self-reflection is the key to Buddhist psychology. When we look at our own mind, we can notice the mental states that predominate, as if we were noticing the weather. Just as a storm can... Continue Reading →
Opening the door of wisdom & compassion
Alan Wallace, a leading Western teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, puts it like this: “Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice,... Continue Reading →
We do not possess or own anything
There is an old story about a famous rabbi living in Europe who was visited one day by a man who had traveled by ship from New York to see him. The man came to the great rabbi’s dwelling, a large house on a street in a European city, and was directed to the rabbi’s... Continue Reading →
In a healthy response to pain and fear, we establish awareness before it becomes anger. We can train ourselves to notice the gap between the moments of sense experience and the subsequent response. Because of the particle-like nature of consciousness, we can enter the space between instinct and action, between impulse and reaction. To do... Continue Reading →
Step out of the bureaucracy of ego
"It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego’s constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking. Whenever... Continue Reading →
