Worry, care, depression, gloom, all of these are targets of the universal raider. Anxiety is drawn like a spider to the web in which we struggle, and thrives on our resistance. But its strength is drawn from this and only this. The energy released by our struggling and resistance is what attracts it…
To allow the body to be painful when it needs to be, without regarding it as a bad thing, can be a liberating experience, a relief even, because there is no further conflict in the mind. Of course it is difficult when pain is severe, but there is a way of separating oneself from it and changing one’s relationship to it…
A couple of years ago I experienced that commonplace modern disaster, the breakup of a marriage. It’s always a trauma when two people who have thrown in their lot together split up.
When rain falls, the urban alleyways fill with people under umbrellas, with each person walking rather glumly under his or her own. Occasionally there may be two people under an umbrella but the umbrellas of the secular world are so narrow they hardly cover a single person’s shoulders. That reflects how stingy space and urban life have become…
For those who know little of Buddhism or who find it obscure, the Dhammapada is an ideal book to begin with. For those who know and love Buddhism it is likely already to be a constant companion and a reminder, just like having the gentle hand of Gautama on the reins of the unruly heart…
The metta practice rests on the basis of loving oneself, or at least liking oneself. Without this step, no further progress is possible, either in the metta practice or in the practice of any of the Brahma Viharas (the Divine Abidings). And with the English — the men at least — this first step was proving very difficult, if not impossible…
Some inspiring favourites from past posts and tweets from all at Buddhism Now and Buddhist Publishing Group.
The fact is that however many tricks a student may have in his repertoire, he will not be able to do any of them, because he has no balance…
Buddhism now 