Meditation: How can I stop my thoughts while meditating? How can I stop my thoughts? “, “ Should I try to stop thinking?” “ How to empty my mind?” How to deal with our thoughts and feelings is one of the biggest challenges in meditation and in life in general. Most of us coming […]
From baby mind to closed mind Great Japanese Zen Master Suzuki wrote a famous little book called “ Zen mind, beginner’s mind” He wrote: “"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." Have you notice how the mind of a baby works ?.
When the mind is squeaking, the body listens Contrary to our Western medicine, the Oriental one and Zen Buddhism consider Mind and Body as an unbreakable single unit in which each part affects the other back and forth and continuously and at different degrees. Body functions, thoughts and emotions are the jobs of our subconscious […]
Love and attachment: Is there a difference? Difficult question. since these 2 words are perceived almost synonymous. From our own experience we know that when we love someone or something we become, subconsciously attached to this person or a thing like home, car, sex, chocolate, addiction, etc., We are even totally attached to our […]
Meditation: Tips & Tricks while meditating About yourself: Prioritize. We always find time for priorities, never enough time for what we perceive as “non priorities”. Make your sitting a priority like your day-to day routine stuff. Minimize the excuses. Pick a doable amount of time to sit. Even five minutes are enough to […]
Self, No-Self, True Self: what does it mean? How do we define the “self”? In our Western world, the way we define and delimit Self that is you, others and me living beings is very arbitrary, restrictive, too materialistic. This “individual self” is just a biological organism made of around 30 trillions cells and […]
Do you love yourself? or searching self-acceptance Another strange Zen sentence. Don’t take it literally! It has nothing to do with narcissism or hedonistic behavior. Zen is teaching that, in order to be nice, empathic, compassionate and generous with others, which is a mean goal, we have first, to do the same for ourselves […]
Happiness vs. Serenity: a big difference? Often we equate happiness with serenity but their origin, meaning and purpose are totally different. To achieve serenity, it is important to differentiate them. Happiness (end of XVI c= hap= “good fortune/luck “ is a genetically programmed, ego driven, genuine and transient emotional reaction whereas serenity is […]
Achieving a “ Don’t know mind” Zen literature is full of strange, confusing and misleading words an such as “empty mind”, “don’t know mind” , “mind before thinking”, “original mind”. In the strict literally sense a “don’t know mind” is understood as a mind empty of knowledge, at max, an idiot mind. In its […]
Spacing our mind When we look, by definition, we always look at something or somebody. Cannot be otherwise. During the day, we look at zillion of visual objects such as screen, the road, the face of someone, your plate, your watch, your face in the mirror, etc.... We never look at the space existing […]
