How Mindfulness Can Save Us From Drowning in Potential

Mindfulness Meditation suggests we start the new year not with criticism and condemnation, but with an appreciation for the mind, body, and heart we have today.

Opening The Present And Receiving The Gift Of Your Life

Welcome to spring! It’s exciting to have nice weather. Its great to get outside and do dirty things to the lawn. Its a relief to be part of the world outside my brain for a change. To step out and play. To actually open up and be part of my own life. What the heck, … Continue 

Acknowledging or Denying Fear: Mindfulness In Business

During one of my lectures on “Mindfulness meditation and business leadership”, I asked a roomful of business leaders two simple questions. “Making a living can be pretty tough and the challenges can often appear intimidating.  Many of our jobs and businesses are at risk. We have children to care for; mortgages to pay; and college … Continue 

Elements, Emotions, Awareness and Transformation

We live in a very colorful world, full of intense emotions, preconceptions, doubts, insights, sanity and confusion. Maitri practice locates itself right in the middle of this swirling world and invites us to see within all this the path to liberation. Maitri practice is based on a series of five postures, which are connected with … Continue 

The New Yorker Magazine Interviews Sakyong Mipham

The New Yorker Magazine interviews Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on video about basic goodness, mindfulness and societal change. “Last week, New York welcomed Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the leader of the Shambhala Buddhist community, when he spoke at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The Sakyong, which means “king”—or, literally translated, “earth protector”—in Tibetan, is an … Continue 

Rising to the Challenge with Sakyong Mipham

The crowd of 800 packing the auditorium of the New York Society for Ethical Culture on Friday night to hear Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche speak was itself a microcosm of society. There were those whose involvement with Shambhala go as far back as the 70s when they studied directly with the Sakyong’s father, Shambhala founder Chogyam … Continue 

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche in New York CIty

Keep It Simple

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche is the spiritual head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage. In this new book, The Shambhala Principle, he discusses his relationship with his father and teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. When I became overwhelmed, I would ask my father what to do. He said, “Keep it simple.” This was one of the most powerful spiritual transmissions … Continue 

mala beads

Coming Out as a Buddhist

I remember being in a bar one night and a newer meditator asked me about coming out to their parents as a Buddhist. “You make it sound like you’re telling them you’re gay,” I said. “Well, I think they would be more OK with that,” he replied, “Being gay they understand. Buddhism, that’s really weird … Continue 

The Power of Sorrow

I don’t know if you have noticed this about your meditation practice, but one thing that many people report is a kind of softening—to your own experience, perhaps, but also to the world around you. There is a sense of permeability, of walking down the street and receiving input in a more direct way than … Continue 

heart and mind balance

The Mind Body Balance

Although we think of ourselves as ourselves, our ‘selves’ are actually an amalgam of disparate psychologies. Buddhism breaks these aggregates into three categories, each having developed at different stages in the development of our race, and each with its own understanding, needs and language. Each can be segmented into two parts. In the following text BODY … Continue