A lot of people come to meditation practice in order to learn to accept things. But how do we that?

The sand of shifting appearances is simply the path between birth and death that the mind traverses – not our true home. Our true home is the clear bright emptiness which lies behind this world of shifting sand.

We all try to get away from the things that we don’t like, yet those painful things continue to follow us. We can’t shake them. And, because of this, we suffer. We all do.

What makes the lotus flower such a wonderful representation of practice is the way that the lotus grows. It begins its life deep in the mud and muck of a still pond, but over time rises up to form a beautiful blossom above all that muck and mud.

In the Satipatthana Sutta, or “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness,” the Buddha repeatedly encourages one to dwell with sati–sampajanna, or mindfully and fully aware.

My teacher, Ajahn Da, often summarizes our practice as seeing and knowing what is here, particularly in the mind, and letting it go.

It’s said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. This is not really true.

We are living in very difficult times. How do we not get dragged down into despair?

As a child, I used to love to play near the pond and try to catch tadpoles and frogs. As soon as I stuck my hand in the water, the tadpoles would scurry and kick up clouds of sediment from the bottom. Once that happened, there was nothing you could do to make the water clear again other than waiting for the sediment to settle naturally.

People often ask what the ending of dukkha or suffering is, and what is the moment of awakening that they’ve heard so much about.

The whole point of Buddhist practice, or any religious or spiritual practice, is to learn to be happy in the face of this life that we live. It’s not easy to live with happiness.

We can think of mindfulness as the backbone of our mind’s immune system. It allows the mind to contact all sorts of things that might make us sick if allowed to enter our hearts.

Everything we do and experience leaves an imprint in the mind. What we expose ourselves to shapes the mind and affects how we relate to our experience going forward.

Body and mind, or ruup-naam, are the two principal components of our experience. Our conscious experience is comprised of, and made possible, by two distinct pieces – a physical body, and our mental functioning. Body and mind work together to create the experience of a sentient being. They need each other.

When I walk through the woods, I’m often amazed by how beautiful nature can be, no matter how misshapen and disorganized it all is. On the other hand, if those same broken trees were in my yard, I might not look at them quite the same way.

There is a teaching in the Buddhist suttas about maintaining equanimity in the face of the eight worldly conditions, which are perpetually subject to change. These are presented as four pairs of polar opposites, namely: conditions of gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute, pleasure and pain.

It’s not uncommon for practitioners to express frustration with the ups and downs of their practice. Sometimes their minds feel calm and clear, and at other times, their minds feel stressed, distracted, or lethargic.

As we start this new year, it’s good to remind ourselves that we have a shelter from this worry and stress in our practice and in our sangha.

In Mahasati practice, “seeing thought” is not the same as knowing that one is thinking. Everybody is already able to know that they are thinking, but without practice, one cannot actually “see thought.”

Buddhist practice is all about understanding suffering, and then based on that understanding, ending it. While we each must do this work for ourselves, the Buddha left us teachings that can give us an advantage.