Category: Foundations of mindfulness
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My favourite chapter in any book on Buddhism or meditation
How I love Pema Chodron’s teaching and writing on meditation
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Amongst the trees
“Go to the forest, to the foot of a tree” the Buddha I lay on the slope upon the shiny ivy and snappy twigs. I was under a fuchsia bush showing the last of its lipstick red cups to the October air. The fuchsia itself was beneath an ordinary maple that was just about keeping…
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Doing something without doing something
If you have sat with me in a mindfulness session or two then chances are you will have heard the Tchich Nhat Hanh lines below. They strike a chord for me as they are ridiculously simple instructions and yet they hold all of what could be taught. Breathing in, I know I’m breathing inBreathing out,…
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Yes, yes but of course
Spring is here. No surprise. Happens every year. Happened before I was born and will happen long after I have passed. Change change and change once more. The Earth spins at 1,000 mph at the equator and orbiting at 66,000 mph and the next season is always full tilt upon us. “Time is a jet…
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I sit content
I never bothered with reading poems until a few years back. I think I probably started at the time I was using twitter a lot. It may be a coincidence, but I still have little enthusiasm for reading verse if it stretches for much more than a page. I have a Walt Whitman book and…
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New Year’s resolutions? Give good fortune a helping hand instead.
It’s New Year’s and all the talk is of the opportunity to throw out the old self and design a new and improved version. Markers like New Year are the most effective time to set goals; the brain is ready and open to see the opportunity for change. But resolutions are often underpinned by assumptions…
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Happy Christmas. May you be ready for the joy and everything it brings
A month ago there was a beautiful poem being shared a lot around social media. It is called ‘Joy Chose You’ written by Donna Ashworth. You can read it below. I liked it that much I used it as part of a Quiet Tuesday practice. It speaks so well of gratitude and of not letting…
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I hear you Mittakali, I hear you
The woman who wrote this lived about 2600 years ago. But she described her practice as though it were mine “I watched my thoughts/ piling themselves up/ all around me/…. Soon it was a whole city.” And now I am sitting here reassured in the knowledge that my situation is normal, probably common. There are…
trustingmind 