Mindfulness practice can help us change for the better. It can also allow us to sit with the things we can’t change and help us work with the inevitable changes life brings.
The superb science journalist Sharon Begley, who wrote a regular column for Mindful until her untimely death in early 2021, was fond of studies of personality: the different types, how much they’re influenced by our environment and our relationships, and—most potently— whether our personalities can change.
Because cumulus clouds are beautiful to behold and generally indicate fair weather, their white, billowing shapes relax the mind and stimulate daydreams, inviting comparisons to animals, people, and other shapes that live in the human imagination. Each of our winning and honorable mention haiku found unexpected wonders in the cloudscape of a summer afternoon.
Twenty-five years after his last episode aired, Gayathri Narayanan reflects on Fred Rogers’ enduring practice of loving-kindness, acceptance, and seeing the good in others.
Gayathri Narayanan
“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle.”
—Fred Rogers
When you hear the phrase ‘Nirvana for everyone’, you may shake your head in disbelief. People in general believe that nirvana is a special place where there is no suffering, only happiness, the place usually being reached after death by those who have already achieved perfection in thousands of incarnations. Buddhist ordinands mostly pay lip service to their request to be ordained for the sake of realising nirvana. Old monks [in Thailand] sometimes say that nirvana can no longer occur today.
In this episode of 12-Minute Meditation, Mindful founding editor Barry Boyce leads us in an inquiry practice to become aware of our preconceptions, loosen our grip on what we think we know, and explore what’s true.
What our heart feels is influenced by what our mind sees. Preconceptions govern what we see and what we perceive. Sometimes these habitual patterns are helpful to us.