My close friend Christa recently posted this image in one of her CTWorkingMoms blogs and I love it so much that I have it hanging in my office.
It also got me thinking about myself. I want to live an honest, open, peaceful life. And deep down I have always felt like eating animals is wrong but I did it anyways. I was a vegetarian a few times in my life but something would always tempt me back into eating meat (my mom’s chicken pot pie got me more than once). Continue reading
It’s been a few months now that I’ve been really working on controlling my mind and meditating on many of the Buddhist teachings. I still have a long way to go but I think it’s a great thing to stop and recognize progress, even small changes.
The past few days I realized something. I’m becoming a better listener! I hate to admit this but over the past few years, especially after the birth of my daughter and the launching of my CTWorkingMoms website, I’ve had a hard time listening to people – you know, like REALLY listening. I always had a million things running through my mind, things I needed to do, people I needed to email back and so on that while people were talking to me, including my own husband, I had a hard time paying attention. My mind went to all these different places and then once the conversation ended I would realize I didn’t even really know what we just talked about.
OK that didn’t happen ALL the time but it was really a problem.
Now that I’ve been learning to let thoughts go I am finding I have so much more focus! What a beautiful thing! Just today I sat and talked to a friend and I was easily able to concentrate on what she was talking to me about. It feels so good to be able to really listen, really, really good.
XOXO -M
Last night’s meditation class was wonderful as always. The teaching was about a topic I had already read about in Modern Buddhism but honestly, listening to the same teachings more than once is really beneficial – I always find something new.
Buddhists (me included) believe that we live countless lives and depending on our karma and our state of mind at death, we come back in a particular form – right now we are human but we have been animals and other lower beings in our countless past lives. Continue reading
I think over the past several years I’ve been in the process of becoming less and less political.
A little background: I have worked on political campaigns in the past and use to work for a social justice organization that did a LOT of protesting against particular politicians. I admit that for a while, I had a lot of anger against anyone who voted for the opposite party (in my case Republicans). I couldn’t understand how anyone could vote for Republicans because the party’s platform was (and in many ways still is) completely opposite to my own beliefs. While I was in my early 20′s I remember meeting a handsome guy who was very sweet to me. He wanted to date me and I turned him down – why? Because he was active in the college republicans. Yes, I’m not kidding. Continue reading
I’ve been reading Modern Buddhism by Geshe Kelsang and recently got to the section of the book that talks about the importance of meditating on emptiness. I will admit, it’s going to take a lot more contemplating for me to fully understand this aspect of Buddhism but I *think* I’m slowly on my way.
So far, what I have taken from this teaching is that we need to be aware that just like reality TV isn’t reality, the reality we believe is our life isn’t reality either. Wow, OK sounds trippy, I know. Continue reading
Yep, it’s true. The past two months of delving into Buddhism have made me interact with everyone differently than I use to. I’ve had many occasions where people have come to me to vent/get advice and instead of advising them the way I did before, I find myself seeing all their problems through a Buddhist lens. Here’s an example:
I have a person in my life that I see often who is a wonderful person but is also highly anxious, always waiting for disaster to strike and isn’t completely happy. Almost daily, she tells me the latest thing going on in her life and yesterday was no different. She went on for over a half-an-hour about how someone else is causing her harm, isn’t giving her credit for things, isn’t treating her the way she wants to be treated etc. Before finding Buddhism, I would have listened (which I still do, of course) but the difference is that previously I would have tried to help her analyze the situation and figure out why this person is treating her a particular way and talk about solutions. Continue reading
As I’m learning more and more how to calm my mind and achieve inner peace, I think a lot about how my mind has functioned until this point. I honestly can’t remember a time that I didn’t feel plagued by anxiety. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve tried pretty much every remedy out there – medications, yoga, not having caffeine or sugar etc. Nothing ever provided me with lasting relief.
And now I understand why. Continue reading
