Dear Noble Friends, I’ve been away a long time. Now it feels good and right to come home. Late yesterday afternoon, a group of us gathered to practice mindfulness meditation and do a bit of yoga and talk in a beautiful yoga studio in Tarrytown (Yogashivaya.com). The yoga studio was filled with the golden naturalContinue reading “The Art of Returning”
Tag Archives: Presence
Three Marks
Space aliens, robots, and clones don’t have belly buttons—this is a common trope and test of otherness on TV and in the movies. Yet I remember finding this devastatingly clever when I first encountered it on TV as a child. You could be perfectly human in every way, but if you lack this one tiny,Continue reading “Three Marks”
Life Preserver
I dreamed I was being carried along by life like a leaf on a stream. In the dream I was wearing the royal blue dress I wore at my daughter’s wedding in England last November, which seemed strange because moments before I was holding my daughter’s tiny hand as we walked down steep brownstone stepsContinue reading “Life Preserver”
Entering the Temple
Late yesterday afternoon, ten of us sat in a sunset-washed yoga studio, practicing being still together, noting in the barest, sparest way how it feels to be in a body. By noting in a bare and spare way, I mean we practiced gently restraining thought, allowing our sensations and feelings to arise and present themselvesContinue reading “Entering the Temple”
Samadhi
Last Sunday evening, a group of us meditated and exchanged about what the Buddha meant by the word “samadhi” — a word usually translated as “concentration.” I don’t know about you, but I dreaded the word and the state that I thought went with it. I associated concentration the kind of grim mental effort IContinue reading “Samadhi”
In the Chapter Room
photo by wallyg “The solitary life, being silent, clears away the smoke-screen of words that man has laid down between his mind and things,” writes Thomas Merton in Thoughts in Solitude. “In solitude we remain face to face with the naked being of things. And yet we find that the nakedness of reality which weContinue reading “In the Chapter Room”
Tracy Cochran 