To Provide Compassionate Care for the sick & terminally ill and create a supportive, nurturing environment for people to consciously face their illness and/or end-of-life journeys.
Vipassana |
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At the Book Club: A discussion of Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra
“Munindra’s message is that we can go the distance,” writes Mirka Knaster in Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra (Shambhala, 2010, $21.95 paper, 274 pp.), the first book about the highly revered and influential Bengali Vipassana teacher. It’s a testament to Anagarika Munindra’s character that this message comes across so effortlessly on the written page. Though the book includes previously unpublished material from his formal teachings, it’s the stories and memories shared by his devoted students that fully bring Munindra and his dharma to life. Knaster, a scholar, writer, and Vipassana practitioner, skillfully weaves these teachings and personal stories into 16 chapters, each assigned a specific quality of an enlightened being—from mindfulness to equanimity—that Munindra embodied. More » -
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The Weather is Just the Weather: Birth of a Tricycle Article
In late September 2010 I traveled by train to Cambridge, Massachusetts. As I passed through Rhode Island, bored, tired, hungry—all the small negatives that combined make travel a magical experience—I remembered some snippets of history, King Philip's War, William Blackstone leaving Boston on the back of a bull ("The Puritan court ordered his house burned down"), the birthplace of American industry, and so on, and read about it in fragments and snatches on my cellphone. More » -
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 » -
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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 » -
Real Happiness 28-Day Meditation Challenge, Day 15
We're now into the third week of our 28-day challenge. If you've made it this far, you've likely already overcome a couple of rough patches caused by what Sharon calls a core group of unhealthy human tendencies that are obstacles to happiness. They're the states of mind that distract us in meditation practice, and trip us up in the rest of our lives. Broadly speaking, they are: desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness, and doubt. More »
