There’s a standard American joke that goes, “A man walks into a bar…” and proceeds to have a short story ending with a punch-line. To get this post started right, I’ll finish the joke:

Recently, I spent almost 90 minutes on skype speaking with Vincent Horn, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks. The Buddhist Geeks podcasts are wildly popular and all kinds of unusual topics are covered through interviews of Buddhist meditators, teachers, scholars and all kinds of other fascinating people. So, I asked Vincent if we could turn the tables and have him be the subject of an interview. He readily agreed.

Not long ago I came across this very simple statement from the Buddha in a book by the great Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh:

Love is understanding.

I find this to be such a beautiful statement and I think it reveals a lot about how the practice of meditation can change the world and make us more loving. Here are a few reflections…

One of the most common reasons we turn to spiritual practice is to reduce worry, anxiety, the mental agitation that can be life's most consistent challenge. As the Buddha taught in the Sabbasava Sutta and elsewhere, while certain dangers in life are avoidable, most stressful events are inevitable, and our challenge is to learn how to skillfully tolerate each day's fresh "mosquito bite".

Actually, days without difficulties and challenges are often days without growth, for its the roadblocks and setbacks that force us to develop new, successful coping strategies. So a good start to reducing stress is to begin approaching challenges as valuable learning opportunities; once we find a way to adapt to situations without adding unnecessary stress, we have tools that are always at our disposal.

What follows are six useful approaches to facing our challenges without adding stress and suffering into the equation.

A few weeks ago, I caught Dr. Miles Neale, a Buddhist psychotherapist, giving a talk at the Interdependence Project in New York. In my post last week on ethics and meditation, I didn’t mention one crucial part of the meditation lifestyle: Insight or Wisdom. 

This post was sent into us from Becky who has an interesting blog about sharing Meditation and Dharma with Children. Enjoy the post!

Things on the blog have been pretty quiet here for the last few days. Here is why...

Khandro Tsering Chödrön, Khyentse Sangyum, beloved by so many, passed away on the 30^th of May 2011 at Lerab Ling in France.

Just last weekend in Nepal, I attended a public teaching on meditation with a well-known young Tibetan teacher at a picturesque temple situated in the hills above Kathmandu. The following extract comes from memory, but I thought it would be worth sharing.

“What is the essence of meditation?” asked Mingyur Rinpoche, with eyes twinkling and a smile ready to break across his face.

A variety of creative answers drifted back from the audience, which was made up of about 100 people: Americans, Tibetans, Chinese, and Europeans, all packed into a colorful medium-sized shrine room on a comfortably cool morning.

After listening to several honorable attempts to answer his question, Rinpoche continued, “Those are all good answers. But, the real essence of meditation is...

Sogyal Rinpoche explains what Buddha taught... in just six words.

In this next video, Sogyal Rinpoche explains what Buddha taught... in just six words.

Why is it so important to work with and understand our own mind?

Because the real source of happiness and well-being lies within our mind, and not in the unpredictable and ever-changing conditions of the outside world.

Our restless and impatient minds are quick to make endless judgments and concepts about everything in terms of what we like, what we don’t like, and what we don’t really care about at all.

We think, “I like this,” and feel attachment or desire for it, or we think, “I don’t like that,” and we experience aversion, pain or fear towards it.

We crave things we don’t have, fear losing what we do have, and get depressed at having lost other things. As our minds get tighter and tighter, we feel increasing excitement or pain, and find ourselves caught in an endless cycle of dissatisfaction.

In the end, we spend half of our life chasing after what we like and want, and the other half of our life running away from what we don’t want to encounter. This is what the Buddha called dukkha—suffering.

Simple logic

The teachings of the Buddha are based on straightforward logic and reasoning. If we want to end suffering, we need to eliminate the causes of suffering. Likewise, if we want happiness, we need to cultivate its causes.

These teachings were not given for the sake of being profound, but as a way to help us understand what actually happens to us, and how we can change it.

The Buddha explained that anxiety, fears and suffering come from minds that are overpowered by delusion and distraction.

But if we can tame the mind, then nothing can frighten us, because all fear comes from a mind that is untamed.

To put it simply, in order to tame our mind we need to understand what the mind is and investigate how it works.

Mind is the most important factor

Investigating the mind doesn’t mean we need to make drastic changes to the way we live. It means recognizing how our mind is the most important factor in all the activities of our everyday life, and how it is ultimately responsible for everything we experience.

In order to have mastery over our own lives and be able to help others effectively, we need to understand the reality of our mind and the nature of all our thoughts, emotions and mental attitudes.

Most people think of the mind as being thoughts and emotions, but these are actually just the appearance of the mind, not the true nature of the mind itself.

So, we have these two main aspects of the mind:

—the appearance of mind,

—and the nature of mind.

We spend most of our lives lost in the appearance of mind, without any understanding of the nature of mind itself. We are always looking for our true selves outside of ourselves, in our thoughts and emotions.

So, we are constantly looking in the wrong direction—as if we were facing the west and looking for the sunrise. Or, as the famous saying goes, leaving our elephant at home and looking for its footprints in the forest.

We give so much importance to these appearances, the projections of mind. Whatever thoughts or emotions rise, we let them sweep us away and off into a spiral of stories and illusions, which we take so seriously, we end up not only believing, but becoming as well.

Our potential for transformation

It is not the appearances themselves that are the problem—it is how the mind perceives them, grasps at them, and tries to solidify them as if they were real.

Therefore, in the Buddhist teachings, the main advice for this life is to purify our projections of the mind and realize the nature of mind.

The good news is that this is possible. As the Dalai Lama has pointed out: “A great Tibetan teacher of mind training once remarked that one of the mind’s most marvellous qualities is that it can be transformed.”

Through the practice of meditation, we can tame our mind by becoming more and more familiar with the essence of mind.

When we conquer our own minds, we become master of our perceptions. When we transform our perceptions, then even appearances will begin to change.

Ultimately, through taming our mind, we can arrive at the profound purity of the nature of mind, that great peace which the Buddha spoke of at the moment of his enlightenment over 2,500 years ago in India, beneath the Bodhi tree in what is now known as Bodhgaya.

Any questions?

Now move on to step 5: meditation posture