Tag: buddhism
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The practice of not knowing
The older I get the less comfortable I am with assumptions and presumptions. I mean, they are not inherently bad, but they can get things wrong and they often lead me astray. In fact, just a few months ago I had assumed that my mother would feel confident in a room full of new people.…
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Hold your seat
There’s a phrase that we use when teaching mindfulness for times when we feel challenged during a teaching session or unsure of how a situation will unfold: hold your seat. For the most part it simply means just that. Stay put. When the going gets tough, don’t run away. Instead, stay embodied, present, compassionate and…
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September’s bloom
Ooh it‘s September… I can‘t tell you how many ‘new‘ beginnings there have been this past week: the return of the Tuesday morning with Jane sessions (alongside the rest of the Sanctuary‘s wonderful drop in meditations), the Being Present course began AND I started back at university. I had been in the midst of an…
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The right side of the bed
I would say that the Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh was my first mindfulness teacher. Now, I have never actually met him. I did see him once from a distance, (at an event), when he came over to Ireland in 2012. Instead, my mindfulness journey began through sitting with a sangha, or practice community,…
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Sympathetic joy
It’s funny, I don’t talk about mindfulness that much with my inner circle of friends. Maybe they would say different but it’s rare that I espouse the benefits of mindfulness, or wave the flag. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of friends who I work with or practice with in which I do talk…
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Celebrating lost days
A few days ago, I was taking a break amidst a busy ten day stretch of teaching and I had met a friend for a quick coffee catch up. As we shared the highlights of our schedules, I admitted sheepishly that right before things got busy for me, I had spent a couple of days…
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Against the grain
There is a Buddhist teacher named Pema Chodron who has famously declared that, “to be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest”. I remember when I read this for the time, a droll smirk formed on my face. Accompanying this smirk, my internal dialogue muttered the word, ‘Great..’.…
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The middle way
I wish I could say it’s a generational thing, but my son expressing anxiety and stress due to his lack of knowing what the next few years look like is unsettlingly familiar. He’s been feeling discouraged and disillusioned with the university experience and is looking to apply to an exchange programme as a means of…
My Silent Place 