I had this idea and imagining it and building it brought me alive. I was never as engaged as when it was half-built. I’d read the blueprint in my heart and carve another piece. Once finished, I lived in it. It was where I’d go to look out on the world. For years it was…
Mindfulness Level 3: INSIGHT ~ Samye Ling Once booked and if you are staying at Samye Ling, please then contact bookings@samyeling.org to book your meals and accommodation. They will need to know the dates that you would like to stay, what room you would like (please click here to see the room types and prices), your name, and the…
This is the third level of our Mindfulness training, where you can learn about the deeper habits and behaviours in your mind, whilst making changes to minimise the suffering we cause ourselves.
Beneath the masks, beneath the names, beneath ideals, beneath the shoulds is a thrumming, ecstatic atomic swirl, unseen and omnipresent, inescapable and holy—a divine blurring of being, a realm of charge and energy— most of it empty space. Sometimes, I remember this. Perhaps walking in the woods or standing in the midst of a city’s…
What we see is not the most important. Could dust rise without the invisible hand of the wind? Could a fan turn without any current? Could lungs breathe without breath? Tell me What is the shape of Love? How much does Joy weigh when hold in the palm of your hand? Can you catch the…
Among deep mountains the heart’s moon shines pure and I see within that mirror the whole world enlightened Saigyō, translated form Japanese by Meredith McKinney This is a Tanka poem by Japanese hermit Saigyō Hōshi who lived in the 12th Century. Saigyō is very widely known and much loved for his poetry of renunciation…
It was as if a window suddenly blew open and the sky outside the mind came flooding in. My childhood shriveled to a close, thread of smoke that rose and touched a cloud — or the cloud’s replica adrift on the slow river of thinking — and disappeared inside it. In that dark water, a…
I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; the one who remains silent while I talk, the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate, the one who takes a walk when I am…
Who turns this into that? Sound into noise? Aroma into odor? Taste into pleasure or disgust? Who turns yes into no? Grace into disgrace? Who turns the present into the past? Who turns the now into the not-now? As-it-is into as-it-should-be? Silence into restlessness? Stillness into boredom? The ordinary into the menial? Who turns pain…