So, this was humbling … All packed and ready for the airport, my cab driver was running ten minutes late, and then spent another five minutes waiting for me outside of someone else’s house halfway down the street. I had calculated my journey based on the assumption that this taxi company is usually early, not late; and now found myself mildly irritated as I ran up to his car to let him know he was at the wrong address. Then, instead of getting in next to him in the front seat, as I often do, I sat in the back, out of view of his mirror, planning to ignore him for the rest of the journey. About ..read more

I was back at Bear Creek the other day (not that you can go back & step in the same river twice), and it was occurring to me that it never ever stops flowing. It is relentless. I’m no geologist but presumably it has already flown long enough to carve out Bear Creek Canyon, which, trust me, is enormous. Millions of years? Where have you been all these millions of years?! Je Tsongkhapa said that our body is like a water bubble, which “decays and dies so very quickly”. Each of our previous lifetimes has been like one bubble after another popping up from an ever flowing mental continuum that ..read more

I was standing today on the empty grassland that was once the Homestead of the Berons family, with a sign inviting me to imagine for a moment “what life was like” for them? I can imagine that they were very much engrossed in those lives and – similar or not to people’s lives today – what I was thinking is that those lives have now all completely vanished. And all our own previous lives have also disappeared like a dream. Not even an atom remains. As Shantideva puts it in the second chapter of Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: I shall have to leave everything and depart alone But, throug ..read more

When you are dreaming at night, do you miss your waking world? Do you even remember it? We are so invested in this life and all its details whenever we are awake, but it goes away every night and we don’t even notice. We are invested instead in our dream world and dream self. When we die, this waking world and waking self will go away forever. And we won’t even notice then, either. We will neither remember nor miss this life. We think we will, we worry about losing everything, but we won’t in fact notice once death has actually happened. What this tells me is that it is more important to prepa ..read more

I’m sitting in a corner coffee shop in Manhattan on this freezing clear day, struck as one is by the unstoppable (except by COVID) 24-hour activity on just one of the (so I read) 12,000 intersections of this city. Everyone is going somewhere, doing something. There’s constant movement in every direction – by foot, by taxi, by bicycle, by paw, overground, underground. Where is everyone actually going and what are they actually doing? There’s no way of knowing from the outside because all we can see is their bodies, not the contents of their intentions that will determine where they actually end ..read more

Compassion and rejoicing can cover every variety of human experience. There is always something good we can be doing. If others are suffering, we can develop compassion. If they’re doing well, we can rejoice, or feel joy, for them. Continuing on the subject of rejoicing. Practicing rejoicing is simple (if not always easy) — it’s learning to feel happy when things go well for others or we see them doing good things. One of its main benefits is that it is the total antidote to jealousy and competitiveness. The obstacles to rejoicing I spotted my neighbor in a local park the other day throwing a ..read more

PREVIEW CLIP Here is a gift for you all for the holidays! If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all the external activity and chit chat, or alternatively missing company this year, see if you can get some space — like go out for a walk — and listen to some or all of this excellently insightful and entertaining Podcast. I’m prepared to wager that it’ll put a smile on your face and peace back in your heart. Happy Holidays!!! (Scroll down for Spotify and Apple Versions). YOUTUBE  I will let the host of The Prymal Podcast, Dan Campion, make the introduction: “Meditation is something that I hav ..read more

Talking of roles, our feelings of inadequacy can come from a pressure we put ourselves under to measure up to what we or others’ expect – but for one thing, everyone has their own version or projection of us and it’s not possible to know what this is, let alone live up to it. For another, in my observation, other people are not even really looking at what we’re doing or not doing most of the time because they are way too focused on all the things they are doing or not doing themselves. Carrying on from this article: Overcoming mom guilt. There were some really helpful comments on this last art ..read more

One reason we can never rest is if we feel that we’re only as good as our next performance. But this is not true. We are as good as all our past performances. We can build on these. If we rejoice in our previous “performances” our heart feels full – for me, it feels like I’ve already done a good day’s work and that the rest of the day is a fortunate bonus. Carrying on from this article: One way to feel happier about yourself. It is worth pointing out that whenever we rejoice in virtue, whether our own or others’, the good karma or merit multiplies! Je Tsongkhapa said: It is taught by Buddha t ..read more

Do you ever feel like there’s always more to do – that however much you’re doing, it’s still not enough? And find yourself identifying with that sinking feeling, “I am not enough. I am not good enough.”? This could be a sign that we need to take a few minutes to rejoice in our good qualities and good deeds. Carrying on from this article: Get rich quick: how to create good karma with little effort.  I wager that anyone reading this deserves to rest on their laurels from time to time – pausing to feel happy about what we’ve already accomplished without feeling that we are constantly running ..read more