Oakville Zen Meditation

Dharma Lecture

496 Mind: our conceptual prison March 24th 24

Mind: our conceptual prison How easy it is for us to be trapped in our conceptual prison called mind, isn’t it? “ I am right,” says the mind: The human mind is a wonderful instrument, hungry for thoughts, knowledge, understanding, judging, and controlling, but too often, it will mistake its opinions, viewpoints, and mindset with […]

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495: Being mindful of our dislikes:

 This is part of a series of Dharma talks dedicated to the practice of mindfulness on the go Write down the number of things, people, and situations that you would like not to be around you. I bet you your list of what, and whom you dislike is a long one.  Your negative feelings could […]

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494 Ego: when our ego is wounded March 10th 24

One of the main jobs of our ego is self-defense. When someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names using any means either publicly, privately, or behind your back your ego could explode…… BOOM! We tend to retaliate, defend, and justify ourselves almost automatically while being criticized. It is happening all the time. To […]

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493 Listening to silence to mute the mind & quiet the body March 2 24

 Listening to silence to mute the mind and quiet our body  Our mind is extremely sensitive to its sensorial receptors - visual, audio, touch, smell, and taste.  Connected to our surroundings is critical to function socially, and survive, and our mind is computing zillions of data from our receptors all the time. How to listen […]

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492 Anxiety. Creating a mental tug-of-war to deal with it Feb 24th 24

 Anxiety: a mental tug of war to deal with it. Anxiety can be defined as the capacity to predict a negative outcome of an even X which does not exist yet. It is based on the fact that the human brain is biased- by default- towards negative outcomes x5 more than towards positive outcomes.  Anxiety […]

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491 Virtual Reality was discovered ~2,500 years ago. Feb. 18th 24

VR was discovered around 2,500 years ago by Zen Our mind produces around 120,000 thoughts/feelings every day.  There are 2 types of mental activities: our thinking mind, and dreaming mind.  Of course, cognitive, factual thinking is critical in our day-to-day activities for decisional analysis such as during work, but most of the time, our dreaming […]

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490: Feb 11 24 Training mind, body, and heart while dealing with stress

   Training  mind, body, and heart while facing stress What I like about Zen is that it is practical as long you practice it diligently.  Stressors are everywhere, permanent, either acute i.e. loss of a loved one or chronic such as guilt They are defined as an event being perceived as out of our control. […]

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489 The Breath as a Bridge by Mark Feb. 3 24

The Breath as a Bridge Our bodies have both conscious and unconscious awareness, conscious and unconscious behavior, and conscious and unconscious minds. For instance, we can think, consciously, ‘I want to move my arm’, and then move our arm. We feel like we have agency and control over that. We also have unconscious behavior. For […]

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488: Accepting your "non-peace" of mind Jan. 28th 24

 Accepting your “non-peace” mind state Don't look for any other mental state or gateway when your current mind is not at peace. Don’t look at the “Why-When-How-Where-Whom” Otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance, and, not only  you will never win, but, even, you will even make it worse. How that? While […]

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487 Complaining Jan. 21st 23

See if you can catch yourself complaining.  Even, right down every time you complain about x,y,z … sort of a complaint diary!        You will be amazed! We complain a lot consciously and mostly subconsciously in different forms: verbally, thoughtfully, and even physically when complaining becomes aggressive. The complaint can last a few […]

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