If your mind wanders here and there, you must be more mindful. In Pali this is called yoniso manasikara, which can be translated into English as “attend to the root.” You must always learn to go to the root (yoni). The Buddha gave a meaningful simile regarding this starting place for all that is. If you threw a stick or rock, a dog would likely run after it. That dog would either bite it or bring it back to you. A lion would not run after the stick or the rock. He or she would run after you instead! The lion goes to the root, while the dog runs away from it. Unmindful people go after sensory objects and get bewildered. Those who are mindful, on the other hand, want to find the root of the entire process.

♦

From Impermanence in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana and Julia Harris (Wisdom, 2023). Reprinted with permission.

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We must learn to speak with love again. This is a thing that can be done in a practice community where brothers and sisters practice loving speech every day. There are pacifists who can write protest letters of great condemnation but who are incapable of writing a love letter. You have to write in such a way that the other person is receptive toward reading; you have to speak in such a way that the other person is receptive toward listening. If you do not, it is not worth the trouble to write or to speak. To write in such a way is to practice meditation.

♦

From True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh © 1997 by Éditions Terre du Ciel and Unified Buddhist Church, Inc. Translation © 2004 by Shambhala Publications. This edition published in 2023. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

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To access wonder, find ways to be naturally mindful and curious. Pay complete attention, like a child observing a butterfly for the first time. This requires humility. You must be willing to become fully absorbed in the present, setting aside ideas about what you know and what will come. Intellectual analysis, comparison, and craving corrode wonder. They block your capacity for connecting with the raw experience of the moment—be it marveling at the morning light glinting off tile, the aroma of a cup of hot coffee, the voice of an old friend, or the hummingbird sipping from a summer flower.

♦

From Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love by Oren Jay Sofer © 2023. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

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When you have deeply contemplated the patterns of your own life and made a commitment to self-care, your vision will naturally expand to include the suffering of others. You can say with real conviction, “I am not the only one. My parents, my loved ones and friends, cannot go through a single day without experiencing pain and regret, fear and longing. The same is true of every being all over the world.” Look around you with caring eyes, and you will see the countless ways that people suffer, how they sacrifice their present joy in hope of future happiness. Instead of turning away, trace out these patterns in the lives of those you know. Take your time: let it be real. Then imagine the same patterns at work in every corner of the world, from the beginning of human history.

♦

Excerpted from Gesture of Great Love: Light of Liberation by Tarthang Tulku (Dharma Publishing, 2022).

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The Buddha offered us this teaching on patience: If you put a handful of salt in a small bowl of water, it will be too salty to drink. But if you pour it into a river, the river can accept it without harm and flow on. If we are small-minded and shut off from others, a small word can enrage us, because we are trapped in a small prison of defended self-interest. But if we can widen our hearts and think bigger, if we have compassion and understanding for the suffering of others, we aren’t so easily harmed by them. We can widen our circle of patience and compassion, even for those with whom we might be in conflict.

♦

From The Zen Way of Recovery: An Illuminated Path Out of the Darkness of Addiction by Laura Burges © 2023 by Laura Burges. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

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The early meditators classified concentration into two phases, and this analysis is very helpful. The first phase is called vitaka, and the second, vicara. Vitaka is the faculty of mind that enables us to pay attention to something; that is to say, to advert our attention—to move it toward something. Indeed, that is where the word advertising comes from. Advertising makes you advert your attention, capturing it. So vitaka is the ability to focus on something deliberately. This is a bit like our normal understanding of concentration, except it is slightly more technical. The second phase is vicara. Vicara is the ability to savor the object you have adverted to. So it’s a bit like you take a piece of chocolate and you put it in your mouth, and the initial reaction is “Oh, it’s chocolate!” That’s vitaka. Vicara is to then taste the chocolate, to enjoy the experience.

♦

Excerpted from the book Three Minutes a Day: A Fourteen Week Course to Learn Meditation and Transform Your Life  © 2023 by Richard Dixey, PhD.  Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

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In the beginning, practice seems to be a matter of personal will, but along the way, it clearly becomes the will of the Dharma. There are limits to your own personal will—from the outset you decide how much you can do, how far you can go, how much strength you have, and you restrict yourself. And in restricting yourself, you start out in your practice already defeated even while you are practicing something which is unrestricted and limitless. The real way to start in practice is by dropping off body and mind. Let go from the beginning. . . . Cast off body and mind; forget about them; throw yourself into the house of Buddha and everything is done by Buddha. 

♦

From Throw Yourself into the House of Buddha: The Life & Zen Teachings of Tangen Harada Roshi by Tangen Harada, translated by Belenda Attaway Yamakawa and edited by Kogen Czarnik. Translation © 2012 by Belenda Attaway Yamakawa. Edited and revised translation © 2023 by Piotr Czarnik. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

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Everyday Spirituality

We have an absolute life and a relative life—the eternal and the everyday—that exist together without separation. It’s important to recognize this dual quality of our nature, otherwise we’ll attach to one side without noticing or appreciating the other. We should avoid thinking, “Daily life is more important,” or, “Spiritual life is more important.” We live in both realms simultaneously, and if we don’t notice this, we will be off balance.

_{From A Sense of Something Greater: Zen and the Search for Balance in Silicon Valley, by Les Kaye and Teresa Bouza © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Parallax Press. Les Kaye studied with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and is the head teacher at Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, California.}

The Heart of Meditation

What is meditation? Please try this example out. While you’re reading, be aware of your breathing. Once you’ve made that adjustment— being aware of breathing and aware of reading—see if you’re more grounded, more able to connect personally to what you’re reading, more available to digest whatever’s especially true for you.

Good news! You can do this all the time! You can breathe while you sit; you can breathe while you walk. You can breathe no matter where you are or what you’re doing—in a car or in an elevator, washing a dish or waiting in line. You’re breathing!

Our mind wanders, but our body’s here and now, breathing. Conscious breathing can be our anchor. We can get dragged back into the past, which can lead to depression, or we can become anxious about the future, which can lead to fear. Conscious breathing returns us to the here and the now, where we really belong. It’s a process requiring care, like training a horse: a slow learner in the beginning but, eventually, a champion.

_{From Pause, Breathe, Smile: Awakening Mindfulness When Meditation Is Not Enough, by Gary Gach © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Sounds True. Gary Gach is an author, translator, poet, and teacher living in San Francisco.}

Subtle Surprises

A true practice is a repeated activity with mystery. We pick something that suits us and we do it over and over again, but it’s really not so much because we think we are going to get it perfect, or even exactly right. It’s more because the repetition silhouettes the changes, and the format of constancy lulls us into the best surprises when the internal continuity breaks up. Because we keep doing the same thing, the fact that it’s never the same keeps yielding the surprise we need.

_{From A Buddhist Journal: Guided Practices for Writers and Meditators, by Beth Jacobs, PhD © 2018. Reprinted with permission of North Atlantic Books. Beth Jacobs, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, a lay teacher in the Soto Zen tradition, and the author of four books on writing and Buddhism.}

To Practice is To Transform

No matter what Buddhist practices you do, training and transforming the mind is always the ultimate goal. Perhaps you are doing special Buddhist ritual practices or specific meditations. Whatever you are doing, if there is no inner change, no transformation, then this isn’t truly a Buddhist practice. Without inner transformation you are cheating yourself, and maybe cheating others too.

_{From Karmamudra: The Yoga of Bliss, by Dr. Nida Chenagtsang © 2018. Reprinted with permission of SKY Press. Dr. Nida Chenagtsang is the cofounder and medical director of Sorig Khang International, which trains students in Tibetan medicine.}

Exonerating Pleasure

It is important to understand that there is nothing wrong with experiencing pleasure. The path to awakening does not involve torturous self-denial and asceticism; the Buddha opposed such activity. Pleasure is not a problem. We run into trouble when we become attached to the pleasure and to people and things that bring it. It’s the attachment, not the pleasure itself, that leads us to lie to get what we want, to steal others’ property, or to kill to protect our possessions or honor. So the trick is to experience the pleasure without clinging to it, being depressed when it’s gone, or trying to recreate it later.

_{From The Compassionate Kitchen: Buddhist Practices for Eating with Mindfulness and Gratitude, by Thubten Chodron © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Shambhala Publications. Thubten Chodron is a student of H.H. the Dalai Lama and is the founder of Sravasti Abbey in Washington State.}

An Agent of Change

We resist change. We fear the unknown. But everything is changing all the time—the waves, the clouds, and us. If we are quiet and still in the moment, we can witness change and accept it as inevitable. We can learn to surrender into it, become friends with it. That doesn’t mean that we don’t work to relieve suffering within that change— we might, for example, do everything we can to heal ourselves or others from cancer, but we try not to deny or become angry that the cancer is there. We can acknowledge it, look at the choices we have, and then act in a loving way.

_{From Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Love and Dying, by Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Sounds True. Ram Dass is the author of numerous books, including the spiritual classic Be Here Now. Mirabai Bush is the founder and director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.}

Looking Beyond the Nose

The opposite of death isn’t life but birth. The door swings both ways: we enter, live for a time, and then exit. We take our first breath and, not so long after, take our last. In between is our lifetime, basically a momentary display of color, sound, movement, feeling, awareness, and complex dramatization in which we’re ever so briefly immersed. We might pity insects that have a maximum lifetime of just a few days, but we’re in the same basic position from the perspective of what animates the infinite galaxies of form. Recognizing this at our core is immensely and wonderfully humbling; we see our extraordinary tininess and brevity in the boundless presence of all that is, and we end up not in despair or existential shadowlands but in deeply sobering awe, embodying an openness that holds it all.

_{From Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark: Breaking Free from the Hidden Forces That Drive You, by Robert Augustus Masters, PhD © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Sounds True. Robert Augustus Masters, PhD, is an integral psychotherapist. His many books include Transformation through Intimacy and Spiritual Bypassing.}

Always Aspire

A prayer or chant is a way of creating an imprint in your mind to one day perceive and experience something favorable. It’s a way of actively setting aspiration through a process of cultivation and familiarization. What you think you become. If I take refuge in my unworthiness, I engender unworthiness, I stew on unworthiness, and I turn my attention toward and fill my lifestyle with actions that reinforce my unworthiness. However, if I take refuge in my basic goodness, I cultivate kind thoughts, I balance my emotions, and I practice a lifestyle consistent with healthy pride and mutual respect. In so doing I remember (become mindful) that I’m fundamentally good, decent, and worthwhile.

_{From Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human, by Miles Neale, PsyD © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Sounds True. Miles Neale, PsyD, is assistant director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science and coeditor of Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy.}

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Imagining Your Ideal Self

You can spend the rest of your days attempting to become some imagined, perfect person, but I recommend you don’t waste your life striving to become some unattainable version of yourself. You’ll never reach the place of perfection, and that’s perfectly all right. The path to perfection will only lead to exhaustion and disappointment; meanwhile, your actual life will be passing you by. The more peaceful and practical approach is to simply be yourself at every moment, accept that this being human is a messy ordeal, and learn to be OK with getting your hands dirty. There’s no actual happiness to be found in always trying to be someone else at some future time, because the fact is, you’ll never quite get there. Why not instead, show up fully, right here, right now? Allow yourself to let go of the idea that who you are already isn’t enough, and realize this deep acceptance is the path to real freedom.

_{From A Fool’s Guide to Actual Happiness, by Mark Van Buren © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Wisdom Publications. Mark Van Buren is a Mindful Living trainer and musician. He is the owner and head instructor of Live Free Yoga Studio in River Edge, New Jersey.}

Developing Moral Resilience

In these complicated times, we have plenty of opportunities to transform moral suffering into moral resilience, what ethicist Cynda Rushton defines as “the capacity of an individual to restore their integrity in response to moral complexity, confusion, distress, or setbacks.” When we have moral resilience, we are able to stand strong in our integrity, even in the midst of moral adversity.

There is a Japanese practice called kintsukuroi, meaning “golden repair.” Kintsukuroi is the art of repairing broken pottery with powdered gold or platinum mixed with lacquer, so that the repair reflects the history of breakage. The “repaired” object mirrors the fragility and imperfection of life—and also its beauty and strength. The object returns to wholeness, to integrity.

I am not suggesting that we should seek brokenness as a way of gaining strength, although some cultures do pursue crisis in their rites of passage as a way to strengthen character and open the heart. Rather, I am proposing that the wounds and harms that arise from falling over the edge into moral suffering can have positive value under the right circumstances. Moral distress, the pain of moral injury and outrage, and even the numbness of moral apathy can be the means for the “golden repair,” for developing a greater capacity to stand firm in our integrity without being swayed by the wind.

Over my years of traveling to Japan, I have held several of these exquisitely repaired vessels in my hands. I have seen that the “golden repair” is not a hidden repair. It shows clearly the cracked and broken nature of our lives. It combines ordinary stuff and precious metals to repair the crack but not hide it. This, I believe, is how moral transformation happens and integrity opens—not by rejecting suffering but by incorporating the suffering into a stronger material, the material of goodness, so that the broken parts of our nature, our society, and our world can meet in the gold of wholeness.

_{From Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, by Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Flatiron Books. Roshi Joan Halifax is the founder and abbot of Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.}

What Not to Give Up

For those of us who engage in rigorous spiritual practice, the journey will often be a negotiation of boundaries. The relief that Buddhist practice brings, after all, is loosening our grasp on the small self; we find that we can separate from our personal views, and this brings tremendous peace of mind. So in the beginning of practice, thrilled by the potential of separating from our ego, many of us are willing to give up large chunks of our personality or identity. And yet, the more we progress down this path, the better we get at understanding when the sacrifices being asked of us are too much, when endurance is hurting rather than helping. We become more skilled at understanding what our best self needs. Paradoxically, we learn that by establishing firm boundaries, we can be more giving and genuinely altruistic.

_{From Bow First, Ask Questions Later, by Gesshin Claire Greenwood © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Wisdom Publications. Gesshin Claire Greenwood ordained with Seido Suzuki Roshi in 2010 and received dharma transmission in 2015. She is currently a graduate student in East Asian Studies at the University of Southern California.}

Being Content with Everything

The Buddhist view of happiness might best be described as contentment. The word contentment describes a state of mind in which we are satisfied with what we have; in which we have dropped our ordinary wishes for this or that and are just focused on what we have to work with in this particular moment. When we are content, we aren’t passive or disengaged with life. We simply appreciate whatever is happening, maintaining acceptance toward all the various situations that life brings. We feel joy, appreciation, gratitude, and connection with ourselves and others. When emotions arise, they help us know ourselves better and see the areas of our personality and character that still need to develop and mature. The emotions are thus a source of information, an inspiration for spiritual growth, and a measure of our own personal development.

_{From Stop Biting the Tail You’re Chasing: Using Buddhist Mind Training to Free Yourself from Painful Emotional Patterns, by Anyen Rinpoche and Allison Choying Zangmo © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Shambhala Publications. Anyen Rinpoche is a scholar and master of Dzogchen meditation. He is the founder of the Orgyen Khamdroling Center in Denver, Colorado. Allison Choying Zangmo is a longtime student of Anyen Rinpoche’s and is his personal translator.}

The Watched Mind Brings Happiness

The restless, agitated mind,
Hard to protect, hard to control,
The sage makes straight,
As a fletcher the shaft of an arrow.

Like a fish out of water,
Thrown on dry ground,
This mind thrashes about,
Trying to escape Mara’s command.

The mind, hard to control,
Flighty—alighting where it wishes—
One does well to tame.
The disciplined mind brings happiness.

The mind, hard to see,
Subtle—alighting where it wishes—
The sage protects.
The watched mind brings happiness.

_{From The Dhammapada, translated by Gil Fronsdal © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Shambhala Publications. Gil Fronsdal is the primary teacher at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.}

The Buddhist Logic of Rebirth

If we trace mental phenomena back far enough, as in the case of an individual’s life, we come to the first instant of consciousness in this life. Once we have traced its continuum to this point of beginning, we then have three options: We can either say that the first instant of consciousness in this life must come from a preceding instant of consciousness that existed in the previous life. Or we can say that this first instant of consciousness came from nowhere—it just sort of “popped up.” Or we can say that it came from a material cause. From the Buddhist point of view, the last two alternatives are deeply problematic. The Buddhist understanding is that, in terms of its continuum, consciousness or mind is beginningless. Mental phenomena are beginningless. Therefore, the person or the being—which is essentially a designation based on the continuum of the mind—is also devoid of beginning.

_{From An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings on the Four Noble Truths, The Eight Verses on Training the Mind, and the Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, by the Dalai Lama, translated by Geshe Thupten Jinpa © 2018. Reprinted with permission of Shambhala Publications. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of the Tibetan people, is a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and the author of over 100 books. Geshe Thupten Jinpa is a Buddhist scholar and the Dalai Lama’s principal English-language interpreter.}

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