At New Year we are constantly encouraged to become a new version of ourselves – thinner, fitter, happier, etc. Generally, these messages come from skillful marketers wanting to sell us a solution to fix what they want us to believe is wrong with us. So how can we be mindful of this at new year? …
There are many times in our lives when we become aware of our desires and expectations and how this compares to our reality. Mindfulness training has led me to notice preference and be more acutely aware of the gap between desire and reality. Last week life threw me a profound experience which made me return…
Compassion in Action – Love and Loyalty This week I have been struck again by the love and loyalty that people have for the Mindfulness Association (MA). So many people help us without asking anything in return – compassion in action. I find this love and loyalty touching and sometimes a bit overwhelming. Here at…
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice – – – though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. ‘Mend my life!’ each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you…
Be thankful now for having arrived, for the sense of having drunk from a well, for remembering the long drought that preceded your arrival and the years walking in a desert landscape of surfaces looking for a spring hidden from you so long that even wanting to find it now had gone from your mind…
I have just finished a week-long meditation retreat at Samye Ling with Drupon Rinpoche. In some ways it was quite hard work with four hours of teaching and 6 hours of practice per day. We began at 5.30am and ended at 8.30pm each day. So my right upper leg had a lot of aching to…
This week I am busy again, with year- end accounts, many meetings to prepare for and attend, including our annual Board Meeting, a weekend in Aberdeen with the third year MSc students, plus all the usual work that crosses my desk. A lot of this is because I am going on retreat next week and…
This past weekend I was working at Samye Ling with Choden and Alan from the Mindfulness Association and Colette from the University of Aberdeen on the first weekend of the Insight meditation course from our MSc in Studies in Mindfulness . I always enjoy this weekend as it involves reconnecting with the MSc students that we…
Sometimes the mountain is hidden from me in veils of cloud, sometimes I am hidden from the mountain in veils of inattention, apathy, fatique, when I forget or refuse to go down to the shore or a few yards up the road, on a clear day, to reconfirm that witnessing presence. by Denise Levertov …