This took me a long, long, long time to learn and will surely take only a moment to say here. Tension causes a huge number of physical ailments and confronting yucky feelings can help release tension. How do we do that? The mind wants a quick trick, a fast way to be better. But this [...]
This was supposed to be a blog about Suzuki Roshi’s quote about making mistake after mistake after mistake. As often happens, wonderful mistakes occur when I search the Internet. First, I found this — a quote from Winston Churchill, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” He was a Zen Master. And [...]
I was an active kid. Not hyper-active, just spirited. Playful. Funny. In meditation, this part of me arises. Sometimes it is a whisper. Sometimes a volcano. Mostly, it’s just me being fidgety. Around age six, I attended Sunday church services with my mom. I remember her whispering, “Sit still.” She would promise me a root [...]
Inventor Charles F. Kettering once said, “You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.” Going Somewhere is something I really like. Going there fast? Even better. I used to joke that my middle [...]
Suzuki Roshi said there is no better instruction for how to meditate than just “Sit Still.” Buddha said there is no greater suffering than craving. In fact, his definition of Hell was just that: craving, desiring, hankering, longing. […]
