insight Archives - Mindfulness Association

The Three Goals – David Budbill

Jacky Seery — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 06:55:13 +0000

The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

by David Budbill

Wow, what a clear setting out of the human endeavour to live wisely! So simply and concisely stated – and yet as the last sentence indicates, anything but straightforward and worth knowing about when it’s achieved. I loved the combination of sage instruction with the down-to-earth commentary, the dry humour and the teacher-student familiarity I felt in it. This was not an aloof wise one diseminating wisdom – here is an friendly and encouraging fellow human who knows his way around the great endeavours and their challenge.

As so often happens, reading this poem made me curious about the person who the words travelled through, and the life that led to this expression. It came from one of the eight books of poetry written by David Budbill (1940-2016) with a title that intrigued me: ‘Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse’. His life was summarised on his website as ‘humble, engaged, and passionate’, and he brought his poetry into the world with others in musical collaborations reaching diverse audiences. Diving a bit more into the traces he’s left on the great web made me feel this almost childlike excitement: the world is full with wonderful people living what Lama Yeshe would call a ‘joyful and useful’ life, I only know of such a small fraction of them and yet they’re everywhere and here is another one!

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

Mindfulness Level 3 – Insight – Spring Intake

Helen — Thu, 01 May 2025 11:23:57 +0000

Tutor: Choden

Dates: 7-8 March, 9-10 May and 18-19 July 2026

Times: 10.00am-17.00pm on Saturday and 9.00am- 16.00pm on Sunday.

Cost: £555.00 payable in three monthly instalments of £185.00

Venue for weekend one- Online via Zoom or at the Holiday Inn at The Crichton, Bankend Road, Dumfries, DG1 4TA. For more details about the Crichton please click here.

The cafe in Crichton Central is open for food/drinks from 10am until 4pm (last food orders being 3.30pm) and the Bistro in Easterbrook Hall serves food Thursday-Sunday 11am-4pm. Please find the Bistro menu attached here and the cafe menu here to see all the options.

There is an on-site Bankend Bar & Brasserie Holiday Inn, for room rates and availability please click here. Breakfast is served between 7.00am and 10.30am on a weekend and 7.00am- 10.00am on weekdays and dinner between 17.00pm and 21.30pm. There are over 200 complimentary car parking spaces for hotel guests.

Please click here for the evening menu at the Holiday Inn, tables are available to book via the website. Please find here a list of alternative accommodation in the area and there is also Air B & B and booking.com. These are purely suggestions, not personal recommendations.

There is free car parking outside Crichton Central and in the large car park outside Easterbrook Hall. Electric charging points and cycle racks are available outside Crichton Central and across the estate. The number 5 bus route from Dumfries town centre takes you from Great King Street to The Crichton Campus. The venue is a 10-minute car ride from Dumfries train station and 45 minutes from the M6.

Accessible parking spaces and a Changing Places Toilet are available at the venue.

There is a 12 metre swimming pool, sauna and steamroom which is open daily from 7am-8pm. Booking is essential and you can pay as you go if you are not staying as a guest, please just book at the Bistro.

Booking- Please contact info@mindfulnessassiociation.net for the booking link.

Our Seeing Deeply Insight Level 3 course aims to enable participants to develop their mindfulness practice by developing insight into the mental processes that drive our thoughts, emotions and behaviour.

This Seeing Deeply course builds on the Level 1 and Mindfulness Level 2 – Responding with Compassion trainings that preceded it. In the insight training we deepen our understanding of psychological mental processes by exploring the roots of our experience, and what drives us.

It is ideal for those who have completed the Level 2 mindfulness training and who wish to continue to develop their mindfulness practice.
It meets the annual continuing professional development (CPD) requirements of the UK Good Practice Guidelines (GPGs) for mindfulness teachers.

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For a Long Time – Mark Nepo

Fay Adams — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 17:07:20 +0000

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
a peaceful place in which I grew. I thought it was
my nest. But slowly, I grew so big that I couldn’t
get out of my idea. It became a cage. I panicked
and railed at what I’d made, afraid to give up
any of my growth. Trapped and exhausted, I
sat in the middle of all I’d built and began to
listen to the rhythm of things that never die.
In time, I grew smaller and smaller till I was
thin as the breath of life. Only then could
I slip through the bars of my idea. Like a
quiet breeze, I returned to the world.

by Mark Nepo

In Mark Nepo‘s book The Endless Practice, we are told how poem was written after a ‘disturbing and liberating’ dream. He elucidates the meaning of the poem by speaking about how, as he’s grown older, he has found himself gradually giving up on the notion of getting anywhere and building anything, so that he can arrive back into what is essential.

‘Until, like the breeze in my dream, I can slip through the bars of my own idea of life and join the actual pulse of life.’

When I look back on my own life, I can see myself passing through veils of self/life concept. I can see that I was living in a series of different realities created by my psychology at the time. I wonder about my veils now. Are they growing thinner? I think so.

With mindfulness, I think we can pierce through the veils to catch the shimmer of the actuality of the present, free of overlays. This is the reward of mindfulness – being in touch with the real, with the true pulse of life. Of course, we might not always come upon peace or delight there in the shimmer. Sometimes it might be the shimmer of loss or struggle that we meet. Mark Nepo tells how through nearly dying of cancer he learned that the only refuge is the moment:

‘To my humble surprise, each moment was a threshold to the sanctity that waits inside any circumstance.’

How about taking this as a daily life mindfulness practice: Ask yourself what construction of reality am I looking through here? Can I grow light and thin enough, humble or open enough, to float out between its bars and return to the actuality of the world as it is, now?

For example, I can see that I often live in a reality of progress, which to me in this life stage is mostly focussed on developing my work. In moments when my head gets tight and I’m feeling fixated on my To Do List, I find can just drop it all and look out of the window. Then feel my heart and breath and connect with the pulse of life within and around me. In a way, that is all there is.

PS If you’d like to explore the freedom from limiting concepts and constructs, we offer an indepth four stage training pathway that moves from mindfulness to compassion to insight and wisdom…

Photo by Dustin Humes on Instagram

Mindfulness Level 3 – Insight – Autumn Intake

Helen — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 11:16:50 +0000

Mindfulness Level 3 ~ Insight: Seeing Deeply

Mindfulness Level 3: INSIGHT ~ Monday Evenings

Tutors: Choden

Dates:

Module 1 Monday 7th September- Monday 5th October 2026

Module 2 Monday 2nd November – Monday 30 November 2026

Module 3 Monday 4th January – Monday 1st February 2027

Times: Each session will take place on a Monday evening from 19.00pm-21.00pm

Location: Online

Cost: £ 555.00 in total for the three modules including manuals payable in three monthly instalments of £185.00

It is ideal for those who have completed the Level 2 mindfulness training and who wish to continue to develop their mindfulness practice.
It meets the annual continuing professional development (CPD) requirements of the UK Good Practice Guidelines (GPGs) for mindfulness teachers.

Inside It All – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 07:53:25 +0000

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 whir, perhaps working in the kitchen
or singing in a choir, I remember
who we really are, remember
not with mind but with being,
and I’m lost in it, found in it,
alive in the cloud of it, astonished
with the sacred design of it,
elegant soup of it,
elemental swirl of it all.
How is it I sometimes
see only woman, man,
cottonwood, spider, self, other,
other, other, other?
We walk this journey
of separation together.
Oh, being who is lonely,
remember?

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I really appreciate Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer‘s naming of the glorious interconnectedness that I sometimes experience, alongside the heartaching loneliness and separateness that I also know well. And yes, isn’t it a curious thing that we can shift between the two? She has written another poem which feels related, it starts with ‘And if it’s true we are alone, we are alone together’…

It comforts me that the two are so close together, even on the days I can’t seem to make the shift out of the aloneness. It reminds me of a quote I read by Chogyam Trungpa in this book about contemplative photography, about how the difference between a good and a great photograph can be a tiny shift in angle. So it’s not about needing to go far for the brilliant picture, or to strive hard to somehow earn the belonging – it’s here already. And maybe, with practice, we can more and more become rooted in the one, while vividly remembering what it’s like to experience the other as a reality…

Picture by Fiona Dodd