If you could take one thing … ?

So, this was humbling … All packed and ready for the airport, my cab driver was running ten minutes late, and then spent another five minutes waiting for me outside of someone else’s house halfway down the street. I had calculated my journey based on the assumption that this taxi company is usually early, not late; and now found myself mildly irritated as I ran up to his car to let him know he…

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Who is that little voice in our head?!

I was back at Bear Creek the other day (not that you can go back & step in the same river twice), and it was occurring to me that it never ever stops flowing. It is relentless. I’m no geologist but presumably it has already flown long enough to carve out Bear Creek Canyon, which, trust me, is enormous. Millions of years? Where have you been all these millions of years?! Je Tsongkhapa said that…

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What is their life like?

I was standing today on the empty grassland that was once the Homestead of the Berons family, with a sign inviting me to imagine for a moment “what life was like” for them? I can imagine that they were very much engrossed in those lives and – similar or not to people’s lives today – what I was thinking is that those lives have now all completely vanished. And all our own previous lives have also…

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One nice way to meditate on rejoicing

When you are dreaming at night, do you miss your waking world? Do you even remember it? We are so invested in this life and all its details whenever we are awake, but it goes away every night and we don’t even notice. We are invested instead in our dream world and dream self. When we die, this waking world and waking self will go away forever. And we won’t even notice then, either. We will…

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How to get ahead

I’m sitting in a corner coffee shop in Manhattan on this freezing clear day, struck as one is by the unstoppable (except by COVID) 24-hour activity on just one of the (so I read) 12,000 intersections of this city. Everyone is going somewhere, doing something. There’s constant movement in every direction – by foot, by taxi, by bicycle, by paw, overground, underground. Where is everyone actually…

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Overcoming the obstacles to rejoicing

Compassion and rejoicing can cover every variety of human experience. There is always something we can be doing. If others are suffering, we can develop compassion. If they’re doing well, we can rejoice, or feel joy, for them. Continuing on the subject of rejoicing. Practicing rejoicing is simple (if not always easy) — it’s learning to feel happy when things go well for others or we see them…

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Meditation & Inner Peace

PREVIEW CLIP Here is a gift for you all for the holidays! If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all the external activity and chit chat, or alternatively missing company this year, see if you can get some space — like go out for a walk — and listen to some or all of this excellently insightful and entertaining Podcast. I’m prepared to wager that it’ll put a smile on your face and peace back in your…

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Lay down your burden

Talking of roles, our feelings of inadequacy can come from a pressure we put ourselves under to measure up to what we or others’ expect – but for one thing, everyone has their own version or projection of us and it’s not possible to know what this is, let alone live up to it. For another, in my observation, other people are not even really looking at what we’re doing or not doing most of the time…

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Overcoming mom guilt

One reason we can never rest is if we feel that we’re only as good as our next performance. But this is not true. We are as good as all our past performances. We can build on these. If we rejoice in our previous “performances” our heart feels full – for me, it feels like I’ve already done a good day’s work and that the rest of the day is a fortunate bonus. Carrying on from this article: One way…

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One way to feel happier about yourself

Do you ever feel like there’s always more to do – that however much you’re doing, it’s still not enough? And find yourself identifying with that sinking feeling, “I am not enough. I am not good enough.”? This could be a sign that we need to take a few minutes to rejoice in our good qualities and good deeds. Carrying on from this article: Get rich quick: how to create good karma with little…

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Applying the 11 reversals to one problem at a time

Me and a couple of thousand other people recently spent a week in an architecturally award-winning Temple for World Peace in Spain learning about the so-called “Eleven Reversals”.  Meditating on these regularly is meditating on the whole of the stages of the path to enlightenment, or Lamrim, and will gradually pull the carpet out from under all our delusions and sufferings once and for all. In…

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What could a Buddhist do?

A couple of days into all this chicken stuff, all hell broke loose in Israel. Since then, things have gone from bad to worse to a hell hole, threatening to engulf the region and the world. When I got back to London from Spain, my dad’s kind new neighbors were asking me what a Buddhist would do to solve this problem if I could? Much ink is being spilled on this conflict from every perspective, and…

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Conflict in the chicken coop

I recently spent time with some chickens in Cartama near Malaga, where I was staying in a rural house with friends and attending the International Kadampa Fall Festival at the Spanish Temple for World Peace. I fed them in their tiny coop – they had limited land and limited resources/food, and, despite their underlying sweetness, spent a lot of time flapping at and pecking each other, even when I…

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A convincing fiction

A convincing fiction Your self is fictional so you can rewrite it. The reason I’m saying this is because a friend just sent me this very interesting article: Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees. I think the whole thing is worth reading (and not that long). And I can’t resist addressing a few bits ‘cos the emptiness of the self is my favorite meditation. They say that this…

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From chaos to calm ~ the power of mindfulness and meditation

This might be Kadam Adam’s most accessible, practical, and experiential Podcast to date, which is really saying something. The conversation serves as a very useful overview of how meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhist wisdom can help us navigate the challenges we all meet as we make our way through life, and that includes both practicing and non-practicing Buddhist listeners alike. Kadam Adam…

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A Festival state of mind

In a recent article I was saying we could feel happy about the 3+ thousand people-strong International Kadampa Buddhist Festival. Alternatively … we could feel grumpy about it. Point being, how we feel about it is largely up to us. During this last Festival a friend shared an insight, somewhat excitedly ‘cos he really got it: Everything is a state of mind. Including the Festival! And having…

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Karmic connections

A guest article by Jan J, long-term Kadampa Buddhist practitioner. Here are some experiences that remind me how the hidden truth of karma is constantly influencing our lives – how we’re all part of a complex symphony composed by causes and conditions. Pooh sticks karma Yesterday I was arranging for four family members to meet up for a walk, and after a lot of back and forth about when to meet,…

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