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Real Happiness 28-Day Meditation Challenge, Day 23
After sitting in the office today, I reflected on the past several days as a flurry of anticipations. Rarely do I realize how inundated my day-to-day life is with waiting. I am always in waiting—relentlessly—for the next thing—whatever it might be. These anticipations take all the colors of the rainbow—from desire for a new thing, stress about an upcoming interview, up to the noblest aspirations of helping another or cultivating my own positive qualities. Whatever it is that I’m waiting for, by the time it arrives (if it ever does), there is already another thing for which I sit in waiting.More » -
Real Happiness 28-Day Meditation Challenge, Day 22
I was looking forward to sitting in the office today. But when the time came my thoughts kept circling back to the various sex scandals whose echoes are ricocheting around the Zen community. It is depressing to think that we can't seem to keep sex out of the zendo. Articles like this from the New York Times make it seem like our lives are dominated by the sex instinct, no matter what our preferences are. So however civilized we may seem, we really haven't gone far at all from our days in the caves, the trees, the bottom of the ocean. Thanissaro Bhikkhu said: More » -
The sun and the wind: Day 18 of the challenge
I haven't sat yet today. It's so nice outside I thought that I might just count my pleasant stroll to lunch as some walking meditation. Although, I'm sure that it doesn't qualify—I was somewhere between autopilot and mindful. I definitely wasn't focusing my attention on my feet and legs, as Sharon instructs us to do in Real Happiness when she invites us to walk "as if your consciousness is emanating from the ground up." However, I also wasn't lost in thoughts of future and past, like I so often am. I saw the man with headphones, shouting angrily at his own reflection in a window (impressive, I know, noticing a screaming lunatic). There was also the Dorrito bag in the tree bed on the corner, the incessant honking of a taxicab. In New York, one is always surrounded by more than enough grit and grime to think "This is a dirty world," but today I was thinking more "What a wonderful world" so maybe this meditation is doing something for me. Or maybe it was just the weather. More » -
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It's not a zero-sum game: Day 17 of the 28 Day Meditation Challenge
I visited Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in Boulder on Monday and before that spent some time reading his books. I particularly enjoyed reading about the folly of jealously in The Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening Our Natural Intelligence (I highly recommend it). I don't normally think of myself as a jealous person, but reading through the chapter on envy I had to ask myself: Do I always rejoice in others' success? Or do I sometimes feel a twinge of self-judgment? Since we're sitting the 28-day challenge this month, I thought I'd turn to Real Happiness for more guidance. It didn't disappoint—here's what I found: TRY THIS Enough Happiness to Go Around More » -
Sitting, Snowshoeing, & Superbowl Sunday: Photos of the 28-Day Challenge on the road
I spent the second week of the Real Happiness 28-day mediation challenge on the road, driving through 10 snowy states en route to Wisconsin. Before I left, during week one, we had been sitting together in the office everyday, and I had gotten used our quiet and warm meditation routine. I knew sticking with the 28-day meditation challenge on the road would be a lot trickier. None the less, I was determined to sit everyday. More » -
Joy in the Midst of Suffering: Week 2 of Enkyo Roshi's Tricycle Retreat
We're now entering the second week of Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara's Tricycle Retreat, "Ease and Joy in Your Practice in Life," in which we're challenged to find joy not only in our meditation or practice, but also in our lives. This week's teaching, "Joy in the Midst of Suffering," wrestles with the question of how we are to feel joy (that "leaping quality" as Enkyo Roshi puts it) when we are surrounded by suffering in our own families, communities, and the world at large. A discussion follows the teaching. In this week's discussion, one retreatant writes, "i must say i follow the river of suffering with judgement." Are you adding another dimension to suffering by judging it, and your reaction to it? More »
