Posts Tagged ‘Mindfulness’

turning life into love

August 23rd, 2010    -    6 Comments

When I was at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral this spring, I asked the audience what they thought turned the inside of the church into a sanctuary. Was it the concrete walls?

When I was leading walking meditation in the chapel at Seattle’s Bastyr University in June, I asked the people with me what turned the ground under their feet into a pathway. Was it the terrazzo tile?

When I was at a yoga studio in suburban Milwaukee last Saturday, I asked the group in front of me to notice the change that occurred in the room from the time we convened at 2 p.m. until the hour we dispersed at 4 p.m. What turned the mildly restless, self-conscious discomfort at the start of our time together into the vast, settled calm at the end? Into a still and quiet ease so deep that no one cared to move? So satisfying that no one rose to leave?

The answer is you. The secret is yours. The power of your own nonjudgmental attention is what transforms space into spaciousness. It turns your wandering into the way. It transforms your life into love.

And now we’ll do the same in Boston when we gather for the Mother’s Plunge on Saturday, Sept. 18.  I’m so pleased that we’ll be meeting at the Seaport Academy, a therapeutic day school for adolescents who need extra attention to navigate the perils of growing up. The students will not be there the day we are, but your attention will, and your attention will transform our humble gathering into the spaciousness of infinite potential. Come see for yourself what the power of your love can do. We’ll leave some of it behind, and you can take the rest home with you.

And if you’re not on the East Coast on Sept. 18, come to the one-day meditation retreat I’m leading in LA on Sept. 12. We’ll turn our attention onto a bare white wall and unleash the wild blue yonder. You don’t have to believe it; you just have to see it.

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trouble with buddhism

July 30th, 2010    -    7 Comments

When you’re as easily teased by Buddhist discourse as I am, you can see the same arguments over and over. Among the refrains I keep hearing are the ones I call The Biggest Lies in Buddhism. Believing them is serious self-deception and keeps you in a world of trouble.

I’m not a Buddha. You most certainly are; you may not yet realize it. “Buddha” does not equate to a celestial being or deity but to an awakened one. When human beings live in their natural awakened state, undisturbed by delusive thoughts and emotions, they live as buddhas. Buddhahood is your birthright. You claim it every time you wake up to the present moment. And even when we can’t quite convince ourselves, we practice the way Maezumi Roshi admonished: “as if” enlightened. “I’m only human,” we like to assess and degrade ourselves. And yet we have an entirely lopsided idea of what a human being really is. That leads me to:

My ideas are as good as yours. That’s true, however, no one’s ideas are any good at all. The practice of Buddhism is not intended to democratize personal views, as in Oh, you think that way? That’s OK. I think this way? That’s OK too. Buddhism is not a feel-good club that aims to equalize the worth of everyone’s self-reinforcing preferences; it simply transcends them. We practice Buddhism so we will no longer be blinded by what we think, confused by what others think, or stuck in the understanding we feel compelled to express on a Buddhist discussion board someplace. We practice Buddhism to wake up to how things are. How things are is not how you think they are. As Dogen said, “Your understanding of reality is not reality.”

No one is perfect. Everyone and everything is perfect as they are, we just don’t view them – or ourselves – to be so. Imperfection lies solely in our judging mind, the mind that picks what we like and calls it best or right, and labels what we don’t like as worse or wrong. This mind between your ears is the source of all conflict, and even then, it is functioning perfectly. Seeing it clearly, we must unleash ourselves from its mastery over our lives. Only then can we hope to repair the mess we have made of the world we inhabit.

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a short history of Zen practice

July 25th, 2010    -    3 Comments

People used to think they couldn’t practice because they were only human.
They couldn’t practice because they had families.
Children and jobs.
Too many things to do.
And not enough time to do them.
They couldn’t practice because they were poor.
Because they lived in a certain town and not another.
They couldn’t practice because they didn’t know how.
Hadn’t read the right book.
Met the right teacher.
Found the right place.
Weren’t lucky, fated or called.
Were hobbled by time, space and circumstance.
And that practice didn’t matter. (At least not that much.)
People used to think a lot of crazy things.
And then they practiced.

Be back soon.

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thank god it’s monday

June 21st, 2010    -    4 Comments

Wouldn’t it be something if we really thought that way? TGIM! Par-tay!

Mondays have a peculiar weight, a sisyphean shock and awe. I see it even in the statistics of who and how many visit this blog:  the slog, the grind, the reluctant rewind, the slow dread motion of facing another week. A week that we might mistakenly think is nothing but a repeat of all the rest.

It might be a good day to start off with my latest Huffington Post read, “10 Tips for Mindful Work.” If you’ve read it before, make use of Monday’s momentum to read it all over again.

And take heart! Your first coffee break is here sooner than you thought. Spend the next 10 minutes sipping a cup of liquid love by listening to this short podcast with me at the New Dimensions Cafe.

***

Thanking her lucky stars it’s Monday is Rose in Amsterdam, whose time zone gives her a head start on every day of the week, and who also won the random drawing of Donna Hilbert’s Traveler in Paradise poetry collection from last week’s giveaway.

Cheers.

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rules for a mindful garden

June 1st, 2010    -    4 Comments

I’m not in Kansas anymore, but as Dorothy herself knows, we never leave our home in Kansas. Just a few minutes before I went to sit among the good people at Rime Buddhist Center, I clicked my heels and realized what I should tell them.

I had first thought that I should talk to them about all of this, but I didn’t want to repeat what they had already had the chance to read over and over. Looking into the forested cool of my mother-in-law’s rambling backyard, an ocean of green that blankets the Midwest prairies in late spring, I remembered a simple set of instructions that I always give children when they visit my backyard garden. (Since she was three years old, we have invited Georgia’s class to our garden for a field trip each year. She is now ten, and I am far older, and yet the instructions still apply to us all.)

Life is a garden and we are the gardeners. Here are the rules for a mindful garden: read more

a day without laundry

May 26th, 2010    -    15 Comments

“A day without work is a day without eating.”
– Zen saying

This expression might strike you as a grim resignation. You might even call it depressing. Perhaps you think of work as drudgery. But when you realize the dependency between work and life, it can turn your notion of work upside down. Work does not detract from life, interrupt life or hinder life. Work sustains life. All work sustains life, whether we think of it as important or unimportant. It is vital and enhancing. It keeps us alive.

This brings me to the laundry. (Everything brings me to the laundry.)

The other day I put something up at the Huffington Post that I’ve published elsewhere: 10 Tips for a Mindful Home. It is a simple list to help us see how life is enriched by doing the little things we might disdain as insignificant, like laundry, dishes and bedmaking. It’s amusing to see the unrest that is stirred by the modest suggestion that we make our own beds!

One comment on the post was a variation of the kind of objection I encounter from time to time, a slow boil of outrage over gender inequality, a denigration of what is sometimes called “women’s work.”

“Women wind up doing a lot of the things that ‘never get totally done,’ that must be redone again in a short time, over and over again – while the man gets more time to build and repair things the result of which can be appreciated and used for years.”

Really? The things men build and repair last for years? Tell that to the man in my house who fixes the sprinklers and the leaky toilets, who changes the light bulbs and the oil in the cars, who clears out the cardboard shipping boxes that multiply mountainously in the garage. Tell it to the man in my house who builds spacecraft that break down dozens of times before they ever launch, might disappear before they ever arrive, and whose instruments routinely malfunction (if they work at all) over and over. Tell that to the boys who drill deepwater wells, and to the ones who keep trying to fill them. Tell that to the Wall Streeters who ride the stock exchange up and back down again. Tell that, but don’t ever for one second believe it.

Nothing that anyone does is ever done for good. Everything is undone and redone. That’s how life is. Why value big work over small, a monstrosity over the miniscule? I’ll do the laundry any day, and I’ll happily eat too.

But there is such a thing as a day without laundry! That would be called a Mother’s Plunge, my signature one-day retreat for mothers and all others coming up real soon in Seattle on Sat., June 12 and here in Sierra Madre (Los Angeles) on Sat. June 26. You must register now. But even before that, check out the post at Shutter Sisters today and see how you can win free admission to a Mother’s Plunge by merely lifting a finger!

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what mom didn’t get

May 11th, 2010    -    13 Comments

When my sisters and I used to ask my mom what she wanted for Mother’s Day, her birthday or Christmas, she would say something like, “panty hose.” Or, she’d ask for stationery, stamps, measuring spoons or Tupperware lids. (Not needing the bowls, you see, but the lids that always came up missing.) These answers were ridiculous to us. We cracked jokes about them. We cracked jokes about her. We didn’t believe anyone could be so unimaginative, so uninspired by the opportunity to improve herself. She was only interested in the trifling, mundane things. We assumed that she just didn’t get the concept of getting, and that she lacked a grand vision for her life that could only be realized by seizing every opportunity to procure shiny, new things.

Mothers can be a mystery to us in so many ways. It took me more than 40 years to comprehend a fraction of my mother’s life. But I’ve been coming around on this front. My mother wasn’t what I thought she was. She never stopped improving things or keeping things going. She took every opportunity to make things better. She knew all along what I’ve only learned lately. Once you put yourself into the effort – your whole heart, your undying love – there’s really nothing else you need.

When Mother’s Day comes around, and even more on every day after, I remember the things my mother asked me for most often. And then I do them. In doing these five little things, I’m giving my mother her heart’s desire: I’m taking good care of myself, so she can finally sit back and rest easy. read more

5 tips for meaning in cleaning

March 16th, 2010    -    17 Comments

When Amy Maclin, executive editor of Body + Soul magazine, contacted me a month or so ago, she was stuck in a chore she couldn’t see herself finishing. Assigned to write a story about mindful housework, she hadn’t yet found that spiritual glow. No matter what anyone told her, she wasn’t inspired by the soap scum in her sink. I told her the magic meaning was in her own hands.

Her funny, wonderful article isn’t online, and so you’ll just have to buy the April issue when you go to the store for more Windex. In the meantime, here are my 5 Tips for Finding Meaning in Cleaning:

1. Make it meditative. Focus on the doing, not the getting done. The motion of simple, repetitive tasks can make you more attentive and calm – the back and forth of the vacuum cleaner or dust rag, the concentrated effort of spot cleaning, the methodical sorting of laundry – chores are meditative, as long as you’re not thinking about how much you hate them. The key to mindfulness is not thinking something lofty, but thinking nothing at all, and it doesn’t take any thinking to clean the sink. Throw open the windows and doors! Spring cleaning is spring break for your brain.

2. Find what you’ve been missing. We spend most of our lives ignoring what’s in front of us and looking instead for something more. The life we already have doesn’t seem like it’s worth our time or effort. The life right now is the only life we have, and when we don’t take care of it, we reinforce our feelings of inadequacy. Seeing things clearly is the foundation of wisdom and the path to genuine fulfillment. Plus, you’ll find your car keys faster.

3. Enfold your life in dignity. Carry out the garbage and it carries over into every part of your life. A cluttered closet reflects the distraction and disorder between your ears. The state of your bed is the state of your head. The daily rituals of housecleaning enfold your life in dignity, because they are nothing other than the way you care for yourself. read more

daily bread

March 1st, 2010    -    16 Comments

Banana Bread by Tracey Clark

Give us this day our daily bread.

When I was a little girl and recited that line of the Lord’s Prayer, I always took notice. Suddenly, my religion had given me something I could see, touch and taste. Something I experienced everyday, scuffed with butter and dabbed with jelly. The other things I’d learned to say in church were in a dusty, lost language. For a moment at least, my Wonder Bread filled me with wonder, a gift descended from the invisible heights of heaven.

I was not wrong, as a child. Children do not err or misperceive. Bread is all this and more. It was only later, my sight dimmed by cynicism and self-absorption, when I began to search for more than my daily bread. I began to do what all of us do, and urge one another to do: go someplace else. Dream, lust, wish, follow, journey, uncover, trudge, and wallow. Overlook the bread, and find your bliss. It must be somewhere, the fulfillment we seek, hidden in something bigger than a breadbox.

It seems to me we spend nearly the whole of our lives overlooking the obvious: debasing the ordinary and idealizing the unattainable. I’m damn tired of it, aren’t you? Why don’t you sit down and have a slice of bread? Have a pair of pants and shoes, a blanket, a sky, a blue jay, the back of an envelope. Have your work, and just do it. Have a neighbor, and say hello. Have a night’s rest, and a day after. Have a smile, a cough, a burp. Blow your nose. Pay your bills. Fold the towels and match the socks. read more

8 steps to happy laundering

February 21st, 2010    -    12 Comments

You might think I’m using a metaphor when I say that my spiritual practice is doing the laundry. Metaphor or not, laundry is the practice of seeing things as they are. Take a look at how to go from the hamper to happiness in eight steps.

Empty the hamper – Laundry gives us an honest encounter with ourselves before we’re freshened, fluffed and sanitized. It gives us a mirror to the parts of ourselves we’d rather overlook, and makes us take responsibility for our own messes. Self-examination reveals the pure wisdom that resides within each of us.

The instructions are in your hands – The tag inside a garment tells you exactly how to care for what you hold in your hands. Not just clothing, but very bit of life comes with instructions when we are attentive enough to notice. Doing it well may take more work than we’d like, but the effort is always worth it in the long run.

Handle with care – It’s inevitable: everything shrinks, fades and falls apart. Nothing stays brand-new. The most precious things we have are fashioned of flimsy fabric. Be mindful with each moment you have and you will experience your life in a different way. read more

10 tips for mindful work

February 8th, 2010    -    No Comments

I have an article in the March issue of Shambhala Sun that’s been bubbling up everywhere, and with it, my list of 10 Tips for a Mindful Home. Last week I had a message from a magazine reader asking if I had a similar list of tips for mindful work. I admitted that it had been 15 years since I’d spent 60 or more hours each week in an office, and at no time during the long stretch of my career was I anything but profoundly inattentive. Still, those days brought the dawn of a penetrating realization that my work was not the problem. Work is never the problem.

In that spirit, I offer these 10 Tips for Mindful Work, or What I Would Do Differently if I Had It All to Do Over Again:

Be on time
Self-discipline is the foundation of all success and the essence of self-respect.

Care
Work is not a distraction from your life; it is not a detour, hindrance or necessary evil. If you think this way it is the wrong view. When you are working, work is your life. Care for it as you care for yourself. As Dogen Zenji says, “If you find one thing wearisome, you will find everything wearisome.”

Make a list
Start each day with a list of things to do. Control is an illusion, so wise up and keep the list short.

Forget the list
Do not mistake a list for the thing. Adapt to the flow of real events as they occur. Adaptation is innovation and innovation is genius. read more

the monastery of mom and dad

January 26th, 2010    -    1 Comment

A cozy set of practical guidelines for mindful parents:

Practice in plain sight. Place your zafu, or meditation cushion, in a conspicuous place in your home, such as on your bedroom floor. As you pass by, let it invite you to practice meditation daily. Even five minutes morning or night can turn your life around.

Live by routine. Take the needless guesswork out of meals and bedtimes. Let everyone relax into the predictable flow of a healthy and secure life.

Elevate the small. And overlook the large. Want to change the world? Forget the philosophical lessons. Instruct your child in how to brush his teeth, and then do it, together, twice a day.

Turn off the engines. Discipline TV and computer usage and reduce artificial distraction, escapism, and stimulation. This begins with you.

Give more attention. And less of everything else. Devote one hour a day to giving undistracted attention to your children. Not in activities driven by your agenda, but according to their terms. Use a timer to keep yourself honest. Undivided attention is the most concrete expression of love you can give. read more

Your mind on Tide

January 17th, 2010    -    5 Comments

My mother taught me many things, but she didn’t teach me much about homemaking. To learn how to keep house, I had to study under the tutelage of an eighth century Chinese enlightened master.

I’m so pleased to see my new article “Do Dishes, Rake Leaves” in the March issue of Shambhala Sun magazine, and I’m especially pleased to see it under my full name. If you haven’t yet read it, put it on your list of things to do this weekend. If heaven forbid you don’t subscribe to the magazine, put that on your list, too.

And if you don’t have a list, here’s a handy one to start with.

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