Meditation and Daily Life

The best way to welcome the New Year is to begin a new positive habit. In Tibetan, the word gom that we usually translate as “meditation”, more accurately means to “habituate” or “to become used to”. And that’s what a habit is—something we do easily and almost spontaneously.

As social beings, we humans learn from those around us. And because we don’t have fixed, unchanging solidity as beings, we make choices. We can choose to follow our innate goodness. If we associate with loving, kind, and open-hearted people, we will naturally develop those qualities. When we acknowledge our basic goodness, we lean toward virtue and surround ourselves with others who share that view.

In this article, Alan Pope shows how parenthood provides an opportunity to take our meditation practice into the heart of our daily lives.

As social beings, we humans learn from those around us. And because we don’t have fixed, unchanging solidity as beings, we make choices. We can choose to follow our innate goodness. If we associate with loving, kind, and open-hearted people, we will naturally develop those qualities. When we acknowledge our basic goodness, we lean toward virtue and surround ourselves with others who share that view.

As social beings, we humans learn from those around us. And because we don’t have fixed, unchanging solidity as beings, we make choices. We can choose to follow our innate goodness. If we associate with loving, kind, and open-hearted people, we will naturally develop those qualities. When we acknowledge our basic goodness, we lean toward virtue and surround ourselves with others who share that view.

In this article, Andrea Sherman shows how commitment to the paramita (perfection) of patience can be an antidote to anger and frustration when we care for those with dementia.

In this excerpt from “In the Footsteps of Bodhisattvas”, Phakchok Rinpoche discusses discipline, and how it is essential to a strong meditation practice.

Andrea Sherman shows how we can utilize the six paramitas to touch the human spirit through virtual technology.

Loving-Kindness or Metta is a deep, heart-felt wish that all beings have happiness, and have all the causes of happiness.

On this Guru Rinpoche day, I would like to tell you about the importance of being honest (gyü drangpo), reliable (gyü tenpo), and kind-hearted (sempa zangpo). Being honest, reliable, and kind-hearted is essential to Dharma practice, but it is also very important from a worldly perspective.

Anxiety is widely reported to be the number one psychological challenge among students today, and in a recent survey, 97% of students reported technological distractions are a problem both inside and beyond the classroom. Any faculty member can confirm this: to give a single anecdote, I was sitting at one of our public events behind a young woman who had brought her laptop, and she had nine live social media feeds open at once in just one app. More in others. Did she hear anything at the event where she was sitting? It seems unlikely. Many students find themselves in a constant state of distraction.

Guru Padmasambhava as the guru we can all call out and supplicate in times of freaking out.