Tag Archives: Mindfulness
Seeing Others as Brothers and Sisters
I’ve heard it said that the practice of seeing others as your own brothers and sisters can be used as an means to develop compassion and eliminate lust toward others. This is a practice I’ve tried to adopt, but I think this is a case when a particular teaching, on it’s own, needs to be […]
Finding Inner Calmness
This Uposatha day, I feel like discussing my experience with finding some measure of inner tranquility. If calmness is the goal, where does one begin? I’m not perfectly calm all the time, as my wife would surely attest, but I’ve abandoned a number of rather useless thoughts in a process that has helped me settle […]
Resolve to be Here, Now
Today is November’s Full-Moon Uposatha observance day, referred to as Ānāpānasati Day in certain Theravada countries. Today is remembered as the day when the Buddha taught on the subject of mindfulness of breathing for the first time. In thinking on mindfulness, I have come to realize how much of our lives tends to be spent […]
Pleasure in Contentment
What brings about happiness? I don’t mean the momentary type of happiness, but the kind that is without boundaries and pervasive. The sort that simply exists in spite of the world. I would venture to say that most people focus on the things that are condition for the temporary variety of happiness to arise within their […]
Remember, They are Suffering Too…
This week at the Vihara a lady asked Venerable Koppakande Sumanajothi, “How should we deal with people who wrong us?” She proceeded to explain a bit about how she feels anger and it is difficult to not respond immediately, and sometimes not very nicely, in situations where another person is unfair in the way they speak […]
Contemplation: Consume
Where in this process is there room for the self? Is there any unchanging corporeal form? Clearly, if there were to be a self to be found, it could not be found in the body, in form… Two atoms come together in a primordial mixture, bonding. Others, almost looking for each other, do the same. […]
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