Exploring the interface between Buddhist teachings, meditation techniques, academic Buddhist Studies, and the practical application of them into our lives as lay Buddhists
Present moment awareness, being present, being in the moment, all of these are pretty common mindfulness buzzwords, and it is so easy to habituate to hearing them that we can lose all sense of what they actually mean. We can even become so tired of hearing them that our minds can associate them with a … Continue reading Present (not) Tense
The interplay between the mind and the body is one of the most fascinating and fruitful areas of practice. One spurs the other in an endless loop; one moment you feel that the body is driving the mind, the next the mind is driving the body. I spent a lot of my practice feeling like … Continue reading Watching the body is watching the mind
The path seems long and complicated, and at times it can feel like the only way that any of our unskilful responses change is by being slowly ground out of us, one at a time. I won't lie to you, this is sometimes the case, but it isn't the only mechanism for change. The Buddha pointed out that there is a simple principle that we should be employing, and it so simple that it can easily be overlooked as important. But when you do some work with it, you can quickly find out how effective it can be.
Buddhist practice is the practice of letting go; of thoughts, feelings, habits, opinions, even our sense of who we think we are. Unsurprisingly letting go and Buddhism are pretty much synonomous. Ajahn Chah famously said: “Do everything with a mind that lets go. Do not expect any praise or reward. If you let go a … Continue reading Letting Go Too Soon
In the time that I have been exploring the role of choice as a crucial element of practice, it has given me a new perspective and understanding of the various skills that we develop as part of the path. As well as coming to appreciate how important it is to be able to let go … Continue reading The Tides of Conceiving
My investigation of the kilesas last week left me with more questions to consider, this time around the role of choice. I found that even though the kilesas are impersonal processes, it appeared that there was still a requirement to make choices about how to deal with to them. This also posed me another quandary … Continue reading Choices and Practice
In my blog post a couple of weeks ago I was exploring the role of habit in our sense of personality, and I have been thinking a lot about Maha Boowa’s idea that our feelings of self comes from attaching to the kilesas. The kilesas are usually translated as mental defilements, and can be as … Continue reading Making Friends With Kilesas
You might not automatically think of Buddhism and quantum physics at the same time, but reading the book Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm had me doing just that. While the book seems to mostly be aiming to encourage science to use the evidence it already has about the interconnected and constantly changing … Continue reading Thought and Not Thought
In last week's blog I was exploring the connection between self and tasks, and off the back of it I found myself with an important question. One day last week I was feeling tired and headachy but had an important job to get finished. Strong feelings of resistance to doing the job, or anything else … Continue reading Person or Personality?
Whenever we find ourselves struggling to raise some enthusiasm for a dull chore or persistence in a long, drawn out activity, the Buddhist approach to motivation often involves recalling the principles of not-self. Feelings are not-self, so we tell ourselves that the feeling of wanting to give up is not-self and we try to let … Continue reading No Person, No Task, No Start, No End
Kalyana Mitta 