In my daily meditations, I use a book titled “Awakenings: Asian Wisdom for Everyday.” The book contains a beautiful photo and an accompanying bit of wisdom for each day of the year. Prior to meditating each morning, I read the saying for the day and contemplate the message during my meditation.

Yesterday it was:

The actions of our daily life

like waking, washing, lighting incense

do not seem very important,

but they comprise the whole cosmos.

by Master Taisen Deshimaru

“Good message,” I thought. I meditated on it. “OK, now back to work. God, I have so much to do today. Better get some of this little stuff done. Gotta make the bed and take a shower. Need to do some grocery shopping. Should try to get to a Yoga class. If I can just get some of this stuff out of the way my day will be better.”

Today was pretty much the same. Make the bed, raise the shades, open the blinds, clean the bathroom, do the laundry, Read the rest of this entry »

Master Taisen Deshimaru said:

“To think is to choose to observe and comprehend, even if one is disturbed by oneself or others. Ultimately, to think means to understand, to understand primordial matter, the first thing in history.“

Master Ok-Sung An-Baron said:

“Between he who has conquered a hundred thousand men in battle and he who has conquered himself, it is the latter who is the greater victor.”

I originally read these quotes on two consecutive days. On its own, the first quote was thought provoking, but when I read the second quote Read the rest of this entry »

My New Year’s resolution was this: “Every day is either a good day or a great day.” So far this year, I have kept my resolution. There have been times that tested me, and when that happened I used tools to get back on track, like this video I received via email today. Aside from containing some beautiful images, it carries a message that can help us all stay mindful of the things that are truly important in life and be grateful on a daily basis. Take a look:

A few years ago, Alex Cequea Fuentes wondered what would it be like to meditate in a public place where there is a lot of traffic, like a busy intersection or a shopping mall. His question ultimately led him to create the Public Meditation Project, a social and spiritual movement dedicated to bridging the gap between inner peace and world peace. The group now holds events in public places all over the country, including San Francisco, Chicago, Iowa City, and Houston. Alex’s says his goal is to create change from the feeling level. “The best case scenario is that people walk past and feel the peace. Then they momentarily become peaceful, and the people they are with become peaceful. This is world change from the core of our beings.” Reactions to these events vary, as you can imagine, but some of the funniest come from mall security guards. Check out this absolutely hysterical entry in Alex’s blog that describes one such experience at the Katy Mills Mall in Katy, Texas, then take a look at this video of Alex meditating in public places:

In a similar vein, in 1977 two American Buddhist Monks from San Francisco’s Gold Mountain Monastery began a bowing pilgrimage from downtown L.A. to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talamage, California near Ukiah. Heng Sure has made the vow to bow to the ground in a full prostration every three steps along the road. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been semi-studying Buddhism for many years, so when I discovered the Kadampa Buddhist Meditation Center here in Sarasota, I was eager to check it out. A week ago I went to their “Stop the Week” meditation on Friday evening and the middle of last week I participated in a Puja – a ceremony like the ones I have attended in Thailand where the monks chant and pray in the Wats, except that this was done entirely in English. It felt like home.

Very little in this world resonates more strongly with me than Buddhism and I want to know more, so I joined their Foundation Program, a course of study with meetings every Thursday night. My first lesson was this past Thursday. Among other things, we discussed the concept titled “Always Rely On A Happy Mind Alone.” The idea is that our present mind is like a wild elephant that is out of control and difficult to tame. Governed by this unruly mind, we face Read the rest of this entry »

At 2 AM this morning, unable to sleep, I was sitting in the recliner in my Dad’s living room. The darkened room was illuminated only by the flickering TV. Suddenly, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. A mouse! He came around the corner from the kitchen and crawled along the baseboard into the living room. A foot into the living room, the mouse sensed it wasn’t alone. It stopped, looked up at me, reversed direction, and scurried back into the kitchen.

Dad lives out in the country and he gets at least one mouse in the house every year, usually when the milder autumn temperatures begin to transition to winter’s chill. He is convinced they get in through the door between the foyer and the attached garage and he’s always reminding me to close the door, but it’s not always that easy. For instance, yesterday we went shopping for a new microwave, and the door had to remain open as we carried the box from the garage to the kitchen. Most likely, that’s when the furry little critter got in. I can’t say I blame him. It’s 35 degrees out and snowing. I’d be trying to get warm, too. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dalai Lama speaks in Sydney, Australia

I have been trying to attend the annual teachings of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India for the past three years, but each year something got in the way. So when I discovered that His Holiness was to make a public appearance in Sydney, I scheduled my travels around Australia accordingly. Despite cold, blustery weather and intermittent spitting rain, several thousand other people also thought it important to be present this morning at the open-air amphitheater in Sydney’s Domain Park.

It is not hard to understand why the Dalai Lama commands such devotion and respect. Within seconds of taking the stage, he had everyone laughing. He began his discourse with the idea that our minds are clear in the morning, then digressed about the raucous party that was going on in the hotel where he was staying the night before. With a twinkle in his eye and a grin he conceded that the people at the party probably didn’t have very clear minds that morning. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve really been in a funk lately. I don’t know why. I thought it may have been due to the cold weather but it seemed to persist even after I arrived in warmer climates. In Sydney recently, I attended a meditation class, where the teacher discussed the benefit of “remaining present” every moment of our lives. After the class we talked a bit and I told him about my tendency to get bored with things when they are no longer challenging. He suggested that I could be totally present even when I was in a state of boredom, “Ask yourself, what is boredom. Take it out and examine it. Look at it from every angle. Even boredom can be interesting when we are totally present.” So I decided to just sit with my funk. In it. To let it consume me, if that’s what it wanted. To examine it from every angle.

I asked myself what I was really feeling. I found loneliness in there. I miss my family and friends. I am moving so rapidly from place to place that, while I am meeting some wonderful people and making friends, about the time I get to know someone I have to hit the road again. Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Jane and I attended a meditation class this morning given by a man named John Barter. John is a psychologist by trade who does counseling and life coaching and conducts classes in mindfulness and meditation. He is also an ex-Buddhist monk, having lived a monastic life for many years in Thailand, Switzerland, and England before making the decision to disrobe. His chosen subject could not have been more appropriate for the issues I am struggling with these days. He began with a short story about a couple who had decided to marry and told their pastor the news. The pastor was very happy for them and gave his blessing, adding his wish that they always see each other as strangers. The couple thought this was a very strange blessing until the pastor explained that he had seen so many marriages fail when the partners began to take each other for granted once they knew each other well.

John related this to everyday life, explaining that our boredom or unhappiness is caused by not being fully present. He cited the steps we had to climb to get into his home, using me as an example, saying that these steps were a completely new experience for me, having never been to his house before. But everyone else in the room has climbed his front steps so many times that they probably did not pay any attention to them that morning. Yet the steps are never exactly the same. Perhaps a leaf that was not there last week has come to rest on the stairway. Or seasonal light has cast them in shade rather than sunshine. By not being fully present, we miss these subtle differences. We are so busy obsessing about something that happened last week or worrying about what tomorrow will bring that we fail to recognize what is happening around us at that very moment.

To his challenge to be fully present John added another factor – what he calls having “last time mindfulness.” Each event that occurs in our lives will never again happen at that precise moment, in the precise way it happened. Read the rest of this entry »