Christmas is over. In the long run-up to Christmas when the day actually comes it’s all over in a flash. I’ve been reflecting on impermanence these past few days. Driving down the motorway at night. Headlights appear, dazzle and are gone. Standing in a kitchen drying dishes. My sister-in-law realises that she must live her [...]
Dec
22
I’m harping on a little, I know, but I’m so blown away by what I have available to me, for my learning pleasure, now that I have this little piece of equipment called a media player. Instead of reading last night I listened to a Dharma talk by Gil Fronsdal about the Four Noble Truths, [...]
Dec
20
It was my birthday last Monday. I had meant to write a blog post about it. It was such a lovely day. Pete gave me a Trevor Baylis Eco Media Player. If you don’t know what one of those is, it’s like an iPod, just way, way cooler. It’s bigger than an iPod, has more [...]
I approached the day with butterflies in my stomach, but felt comfortable within half an hour of being there. It was my first time on retreat. It was a teaching retreat, and we learned about insight meditation (Vipassana). I’ve been trying out insight meditation over the past few months, so this has given me a [...]
Some months back I was looking for a Buddha to take pride of place in my little shrine. This would have been ideal, if a little on the large side. Right action for the environment! [via: Make]
Tomorrow I’m off on my first ever retreat. It’s a one day insight meditation retreat. I’m excited and nervous.
An elderly gentleman with a long white beard looked at the group and said: “Here’s how I see it. We are conditioned to seeing things as black and white, my way is right and your way is wrong, and this causes us to react in a knee-jerk fashion to things and people that irritate us. [...]
I am no longer a vegan with a vengeance. I fell off that wagon. The wagon was high and I fell hard. The path was too extreme and I couldn’t keep up. I’m still travelling to the same destination, but I’m taking an easier route, a route called vegetarianism. I no longer feel guilty when [...]
Past my bedtime, with a headache, but not feeling tired, I sat in front of the noisy television and a blank sheet of paper. Thoughts ran through my head and formed themselves into incorrectly syllabled haiku on the blank page. head achesTV blaringgo to bed lights offcreep upstairslights out all is quietears are ringingtinnitus lazy [...]
I spend a fair amount on time with my nose in a book, and recently I’ve been taking in the wisdom of Edward Espe Brown’s Tassajara Cooking. Here’s something I’ve learned this week about keeping my kitchen in order (excerpt from the book): “Cooking makes cleaning possible, cleaning makes cooking possible. It’s all the same [...]
via: The Worst Horse
hieroglyphic stairway it’s 3:23 in the morningand I’m awakebecause my great great grandchildrenwon’t let me sleepmy great great grandchildrenask me in dreamswhat did you do while the planet was plundered?what did you do when the earth was unraveling? surely you did somethingwhen the seasons started failing? as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?did you [...]
To start with, here are a couple of fantastic recent blog posts from a few of my favourite blogs: Zen in Ten, by the amazing Karen Maezen Miller or Momma Zen as she is also known; and Results of Practice by Wade at The Middle Way. Then I’ve got some great parenting links to share: [...]