In the last article on Buddha and the Brain, I quoted from Transform Your Life on how our body and mind are different entities. If this is true, it has huge implications on our lives: for one thing it allows for the continuum of past and future lives and karma. It also means that our … Continue reading “How to meditate on the peaceful clarity of your own mind”
5 mins read. Without mindfulness, alertness, and concentration, our unpeaceful, uncontrolled thoughts (aka delusions) will keep running the show forever. In other words, we won’t be able to stop our suffering. Carrying straight on from this article, Improving our focus. In Essence of the Middle Way it is said that we need to bind our … Continue reading “Getting started with mindfulness”
9 mins read Do you ever wish you had a quick fix for an unhappy mind? Like you even know what you could be doing to feel better, but your mind is just too roiled to be able to do it? The craving is just too strong and convincing, the irritation just too, well, irritating? … Continue reading “Emergency aid for a troubled mind”
Do you ever feel as if your mind is crammed full of thoughts you’d rather not be having? Or stuck in painful places, as if your thoughts are thinking you rather than the other way around? Dragging you around with them wherever the heck they feel like it, even when you’d rather be somewhere else? And … Continue reading “Your mind is empty (even if it doesn’t feel like it) …”
With attachment born of ignorance we are always splitting ourselves off from our actual happiness, the happiness of our own peaceful mind. Holding onto an isolated real “self”, distanced from “other”, happiness is now necessarily separate from us, other than us. We distance ourselves from it in time – “Oh I was so happy back THEN!” … Continue reading “Feel free to change your mind”
Right now, reading this, what is the consciousness you are having of your screen, or the room around you? That consciousness is not physical. You cannot see it with your eyes or with any physical instrument, however subtle. You cannot touch it, you cannot sit on it, you cannot photograph it, you cannot reproduce it, … Continue reading “Meditation on clarity and non-duality”
The meditation on the nature of our own mind has many benefits, the first being that it pacifies distractions. If we understand what we are meditating on, we’ll see how that works. For perfect instructions, please consult Geshe Kelsang’s beautiful new book, The Oral Instructions of Mahamudra. The nature and function of the mind In … Continue reading “Clear mind”
Yesterday I met Steve, recently evicted from his mobile home and locked out from his possessions for no longer earning enough money from eBay to pay his rent. Living in his car for two weeks, he has just been rescued by my old friend Iben who lives next to him and who decided to buy … Continue reading “Clearing out the clutter from our mind”
“Mindfulness is as good as antidepressants, study says”: “Mindfulness therapy is gaining headway in many areas of psychology, and now there’s more evidence to back up its effectiveness. A new study published the Archives of General Psychiatry finds that depression patients in remission who underwent mindfulness therapy did as well as those who took an … Continue reading “Mindfulness is as good as antidepressants”
10 mins read. How’s your attention span? These days, people are complaining of being more scatter-brained than ever – some studies even suggest that we may have the attention span of your average guppy! Having a short attention span affects everything from being able to get much done through to feelings of restlessness, lack of … Continue reading “What are we going to do about our short attention spans?!”
