When boredom becomes an opportunity We don’t like to be bored. When we are actively engaged in something, there is no boredom. But when there is nothing interesting or mandatory to absorb our attention or entertain, it starts to hurt our self-image very quickly. But if we suddenly become idle in our space-time, we […]
When our ego needs help Our ego or self has 2 faces. The constructive/positive and the destructive/negative one. The good self is critical to grow, to survive, to have pleasure, and to function and interact properly. No brainer here. The bad self: Ego is our main source of “pain”, affliction we all […]
Ego: its role in our conflicts with difficult people Ego-self that is I, me, myself, and mine is absolutely critical for survival, identification, thinking, feelings, behavior at all levels and so on. However also, ego-self is at the heart of many of our relationships Because we perceived our ego/self as a single and isolated […]
Emotional suffering Most of us start to practice Zen mindfulness-based meditation because of problems such as dissatisfaction, unhappiness, physical/emotional pain and disillusion or for any other specific reasons happening in life. These reasons are called "suffering". “Maybe Zen meditation is going to fix my problems and make me happy”. Internet and books are full […]
The pursuit of happiness by Kris Everything we do in life is driven by only one thing and that is to seek happiness and avoid suffering. But what is happiness? Happiness is not one thing but a continuum and evolves as the person evolves. For simplicity, we can consider this evolution to be made […]
Black, White and Shades of Grey by Harish member of our Sat. group In our journey through life, we are constantly making decisions and passing judgments on one issue or another. The result of this process subjects us to emotional highs and lows. So how do we cope with the suffering brought on by […]
Mindfulness on desire In Zen Buddhism, desire (I want), it opposite hatred (I don’t want)and illusion are considered our 3 main roots of unhappiness, struggle, disappointment and dissatisfaction because they are directly related to our ego-mind. Many think that Zen spiritual life must be free from desire. This is misunderstanding Zen message. Desire and […]
Being mindful to .......nothingness Being mindful to nothingness. This is one of these weird, and obscure wordings frequently found in Zen literature. How can we be mindful to nothing since being mindful is to focus on something x, y, z w/o analytic, discriminating or judgmental decision? What is nothing? Here are few examples: Can […]
ZEN saying Feb. 28th 18 Make peace with the past & future (nothing you can do about them: too late for the first one, too early for the second.). The former is dead and […]
Meditation: a misunderstanding We are attracted to practice mindfulness meditation from many reasons:because of what we read from Google or were told by others or because we want more out of our life and ourselves. We want to be more peaceful, more centered, more balanced, more patient, more in control, wiser and more […]
