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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
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“Yes and” Zen: Say Yes. Better Yet, Say Less
Read time 3 minutes. ‘Yes and’ Zen is a stand alone article in our series regarding Acceptance. Joseph Campbell once asked Sri Krishnamenon, “Since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine, is a manifestation of divinity itself, how can we say ‘no’ to anything in the world—how can we say ‘no’ to brutality, to stupidity, to
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Absolute Freedom: The Endgame of Acceptance and Experience
Read time 4 minutes. Absolute Freedom is a stand alone article in our series regarding Acceptance. Our last lesson on radical acceptance turned toward the subject of authentic experience. With it comes a freedom that cannot be manufactured by the ego. This entire series has been pointing us toward that realization, and guiding us along the
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Roses and Thorns: “Me,” The Great Troublemaker
Read time 3 minutes. A new perspective we can take when walking amidst the garden, roses and thorns. At first glance, this lesson may sound like it is about optimism over pessimism. There is some of that here, but let us take it a step deeper. When we walk into a garden, our attention naturally