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Balance and Harmony: The Middle Way of Mindfulness
Read time 3 minutes. Balance and Harmony is a stand alone article in our Everyday Zen series. This practice of looking within, subtle and nuanced as it is, leads to balance and harmony. Over time, it deepens into a recognition of the balance and harmony already present all around us. But to realize transformation, one condition must…
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Easing Inner Turmoil: Ride The Wave
Read time 3 minutes. Easing Inner Turmoil is a stand alone article in our Everyday Zen series. A Zen practice is not about eliminating every thought or silencing every emotion. It is aimed—indirectly—at easing inner turmoil. Three quotes say it best: “The mind is a beautiful servant, but a dangerous master.” — Sadhguru “…there is no such thing…
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A Knowing Glance Within: I See You
Read time 4 minutes. A Knowing Glance Within is a stand alone article in our Everyday Zen series. Let’s pick up where we left off with Everyday Zen. Today I want to focus on the act of a knowing glance within—a glimpse of allowing. Why another lesson on this? Because if you’ve been following these practices, the…
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Practical Mindfulness and The Art of Experiential Knowing
Read time 4 minutes. Practical Mindfulness is a stand alone article in our Everyday Zen series. In the last lesson I borrowed Charlotte Joko Beck’s phrase everyday Zen. I described it as daily, practical mindfulness—practical meaning seasoned, trained, skilled. The more often we weave moments of awareness into ordinary life, the more real shift we begin to notice: in…
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Everyday Zen: 5 Tools Of Awareness Beyond Conditioning
Read time 7 minutes. Awareness Beyond Conditioning is a stand alone article in our Everyday Zen series. Today’s lesson is one we can get excited about. It’s where the knowledge we’ve been gathering begins to shift into practice—into something lived. Many of Charlotte Joko Beck’s teachings turn on Zazen, the seated meditation practice central to…
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Acceptance Without Compromise: Empowered, Confident Strength
Read time 5 minutes. Acceptance Without Compromise is a stand alone article in our series regarding Acceptance. We’ve spent a lot of time exploring acceptance, and it’s worth pausing to clear up one final misconception. Too often, people assume that radical acceptance turns us into pushovers. That if we accept what is, we are destined to…
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Acceptance Meditation Practice: Die While You’re Alive
Read time 4 minutes. Acceptance Meditation Practice is a stand alone article in our series regarding Acceptance. Today’s lesson turns to an old and powerful meditation technique: the practice of contemplating death and mortality. On the surface, it may sound grim. Yet, as with so many Zen practices, what seems dark at first becomes a gateway…
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Faith Turbocharged: This One Goes To 11
In The Ineffectiveness of Willpower, I argued that committed practice—not willpower—is the most reliable path to transformation. Today I want to affirm that truth in a way that inspires us to live it. This is not about halfway measures. This is about Zen faith with the dial turned all the way up. Faith turbocharged. What…
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Good Practice Destroys Itself: The Selfishness of Selflessness
Read time 3 minutes. A good practice destroys itself and the everything that motivates us to do it along with it. Charlotte Joko Beck once wrote: “Practice, if you get right down to it, is very self-centered… But when you do it, something else happens. It begins to eat up the illusions that are making…