There’s a song that goes “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug”. Sometimes things go for you and sometimes things go against you, we have all experienced being on the receiving end of both sides of life. We all know that these ups and downs are part and parcel of life. The Buddha knew … Continue reading The Worldly Winds Will Always Blow
Tag: practice
Living Without Resistance
If you know anything about Buddhism then the phrase ‘letting go’ is nothing new to you. We all know that letting go can be hard, but sometimes we don’t even realise that we haven’t let go because we can’t recognise that we are holding on to something. We might think that we have no problems … Continue reading Living Without Resistance
Love For All Beings
‘You don’t believe in God though, do you? Or reincarnation, I mean that’s just silly.’ For Westerners coming to Buddhism, often from a background of a theistic religion like Christianity or Judaism, the initial appeal of it is that you don’t need to believe in anything. Jaded by their experience of the dogma and the … Continue reading Love For All Beings
Which Bus Are You Catching?
The five precepts are the most basic Buddhist practice and yet working with them can be anything but simple. These five directions - to not kill, not steal, not have inappropriate sexual relationships, not lie, and not drink or take drugs that cause carelessness - are the foundation of a Buddhist practice. When the Buddha … Continue reading Which Bus Are You Catching?
5 Hours of Nothing
It would be nice in meditation practice if it was easy to see when we make improvements, like adding another 5kg on the weight stack at the gym, but the reality is that we very rarely see the changes happening in real time. In many cases we don’t even realise something has changed for us … Continue reading 5 Hours of Nothing
Recognising Peace
Peace is one of the aims of meditation but at the start of our practice we can struggle to believe that we have achieved any kind of peace. This is simply because we cannot see it yet. In my previous post I talked about the importance of cultivating joy from our practice and one of … Continue reading Recognising Peace
Coming Back From Retreat
Having just come back from a 5 day retreat myself the question that we often have about how can we maintain our retreat experience when we return to our ordinary lives is fresh in my mind. It is a question that is asked of the teacher on virtually every retreat, but yet there is never … Continue reading Coming Back From Retreat

