One of the greatest gifts we could ever give to our family, friends, co-workers, and even our pets is the gift of presence.  What does that mean? The gift of presence? You know the typical scenario we can find ourselves in: emails galore, text messages that need to be returned, kids, work, and family obligations […]

You don’t need me to tell you that what is going on around many parts of the world is destructive, chaotic, unkind, and even sinister. All we need to do is turn on the news for five minutes to feel the weight of despair. Disease, war, oppression, discrimination, climate change, violence, intolerance, and unrest. What does […]

Are you feeling stuck, unmotivated and uninspired? Take your ego mind out of the equation! In Buddhism, all of the physical and emotional obstacles can be very powerful teachers.  If we allow ourselves to get caught up in the daily minutiae and stressors in our daily lives, it can almost be impossible for us to […]

One of the greatest benefits of meditation is it allows us to stop the insanity of our daily lives. Have you ever stopped to notice how we are caught up in an endless tug-of-war with the way things are?  Think about how easy it is to be driven out of the present moment by our own […]

If we walk around believing everything we think without question, particularly the not so pleasant self-doubting thoughts, it’s pretty hard to see any other viewpoint than our own. If we tell ourselves certain things about ourselves long enough, it may never even occur to us to question our own thinking.

Meditation isn’t about trying to stop thinking. Instead it’s about noticing the thoughts as they arise and allowing them to be. To be able to have access again to our ground state of being which is already whole and complete, we must recognize how we’ve allowed ourselves to be hooked by the stories and conversations we tell ourselves in our own minds. Most times, we don’t even question the thoughts, perceptions, judgments or beliefs and instead believe our own thinking.

What if your happiness, joy, peace and fulfillment is just covered over by an old mindset of limiting beliefs and assumptions? Making positive changes starts with a shift in mindset. Once that takes place, the rest will follow.

he truth involves letting go of those long-held perceptions that keep us imprisoned in patterns of behavior and ways of being which prevent us from living a life of freedom, peace, and joy. Letting go of those beliefs involves looking at ourselves deeply. Understand that for any concrete and lasting change to occur, we have to be willing to change. Without this willingness, we may simply be seeking a change that doesn’t actually involve us!

Many people come to spiritual practice or learn meditation in an effort to induce positive emotional states or to at least minimize negative emotional states. But those feelings of happiness and joy are byproducts of awakening, not the actual awakening itself. The problem is, as long as we chase the byproducts of awakening, we might miss the real thing.

Stressed, unfulfilled, stuck? Do you have the feeling that there just has to be more to life than the way you are living it today?

Anyone who has had even the slightest introduction to Buddhist teaching is familiar with its starting point: the inescapable truth that existence entails "suffering." This is The First Noble Truth, one of the most central teachings of Buddhism. One of the fundamental teachings behind Buddhism, its ethics, philosophy, practices and community life, is the discovery that freedom and joy are possible in the face of the regular "suffering" of human life. 

It’s no surprise that some of the strongest areas of research centered on attention. Researchers at MIT and UC Santa Barbara found that merely eight minutes of meditation practice improved concentration and reduced mind-wandering. They also found that mindfulness had a dramatic effect on working memory - the facility we have to manipulate stored information in order to reason and make decisions.

"No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew." - Albert Einstein

Ever tried to stop the incessant flow of chatter in your mind? Have you tried to meditate before but just can’t seem to settle your thoughts long enough to experience what people say meditation is supposed to bring you? The Sanskrit word mantra literally is translated as “vehicle of the mind” which is exactly its purpose. Meditation dates back over 2,500 years and while there are many forms of meditation, the use of a mantra is quite adept at helping you quiet that internal dialog.