The summer cold has hit me! I work at a facility that sees a lot of school groups from around the province. Amazingly, I had managed to completely avoid contracting the various colds and flues that had been making their rounds. Friday was the last day of the school programs and - wouldn't you know …
Opening up to Synchronicity
Now that my school schedule has lightened up, I've started sitting with the local meditators once a week. The site is about an hour away, but well worth the journey! I’m not sure if it’s the presence of other meditators, or listening to the instruction again, but I’m definitely noticing a difference with these sits. …
Is Competition Wrong?
Competition is vital to our current social structure. Businesses compete for the best employees, schools compete for the best teachers, sports teams for the best records, grocery stores for the best produce, students for the best grades, etc. This idea of limited resources is everywhere in society which leads us to constantly be evaluating and judging people …
Feeling grief
How long has it been? Sometimes it seems only last week that my mother died, tho it's been over 18 months. But the ache comes back at times with such intensity that I feel it may never go away. Just this morning I was reduced to tears and sobbing by the simple act of pouring …
The Natural Law
I'm going to run you through some definitions to see if we're on the same page. Dhamma is the natural law; dhamma is not a belief. Meditation helps me learn the natural law at deeper and deeper levels over time. The insights I gain from my daily practice impact my beliefs. My beliefs are not …
Transformation of Faith in my spiritual journey!
In last 2 posts I talked about two different dimensions of faith –one dimension is experienced based or insight based faith and other dimension is assumed (unrecognized) faith. Being born and raised in India, I have experienced another very strange dimension of faith – in India we call it shraddha. Shraddha is universal term so you can …
Continue reading Transformation of Faith in my spiritual journey!
The Anchor
Life is confusing with many twists and turns. We're bound to encounter great pains and difficulties and these periods of life truly test who we are. There is no greater challenge than dealing with our personal dying process and the dying process of loved ones. In these most emotionally charged and complicated periods, it's nice to know …
They’ll Catch Up
My sister visited this weekend and shared something wonderful with me. She recently completed some professional training (she's a therapist in the counseling field) and was so excited to tell me about "the Merritt thing". Merritt is the name of the town where I did my 10-day course. It turns out that the guy presenting …
Menstrual Awareness
Is it my menstrual cycle or a saṅkhāra? Maybe it doesn't have to be one or the other, maybe both are a seamless part of my purification process… A female friend and I both agreed the our menstrual cycles sometimes took us into mind altering states; along with the negative emotional states and physical pains most …
The Social Scene
So I'm leaving my introverted space and I'm reengaging the world and the first thing that comes up is, "How should I be engaging my social scene?" I really dislike social obligation. You know, those conversations where you talk about the weather because it would be rude not to talk but you don't think you want …
Living Vipassana 