New York Insight

This past January, I joined five other educators for the 2013 Certificate Program in Mindfulness for Educators, jointly sponsored by the Center for Mindful Inquiry (Brattleboro, VT), the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and the Antioch University New England Center for School Renewal. The program includes bookend weekend retreats in January and December, a five-day mid-summer study retreat, and numerous readings from Buddhist and educational sources that are written and dialogued about both on retreat and in online forums. The learning community that has formed amongst the cohort of educators, the two principal teachers, and the two assistant teachers is joyfully unlike anything I have experienced.

Eight easy steps to happiness. Yet another viral Facebook update to mock me. As I sit here, feeling relatively unhappy myself, I wonder “what is wrong with me that I cannot find happiness in this Huffington Post article?!?!?!” Oh right. Because that would be ridiculous.

When I’m listening, I’m almost always planning what the next words out of my mouth will be. I try, rather unsuccessfully, to be more present while communicating, but it wasn’t until my first day of Insight Dialogue practice that almost infinite layers pasted over possible mindfulness.

Do I need to register as a user to use the site? I'm not sure my registration went through? Is this site secure?

If when you hear “monkey mind” you think, “more like 100 monkeys on steroids piled into a 2’x2’ cage with banana-scented bars,” then this article is for you.

Where do the instructions for metta practice come from? The suttas give relatively little instruction on what actually to do, beyond generating universal good will that we find in the Metta Sutta, and the practice of focusing on each direction, in an oft-cited pericope:

This was a conversation with my dad about my metta experiments last year. Let me back up. I was starting to feel too obsessed with money. And although probably no more than the average person in New York. As many of us know, it can be hard to make your rent each month. And, like many of us know, you can count yourself lucky if you have an apartment to pay rent on.

There is a rock wall that decorates the front yard at Insight Meditation Center. One morning, I decided to go sit there under the sun and sip on my tea. It's a great spot to warm up, as mornings in Barre, MA can be quite chilly even in the midst of summer. After sitting there for a few minutes, I started noticing these bees flying around me.

The end of my ten-year relationship brought with it a sea of feelings and experiences. At times, it felt as if I was being pulled in with such voracity that I had no ability to anchor myself to any shoreline. I found refuge in meditation and later in the Dharma. It certainly hasn’t been a consistent practice but one that has given me a home to return to when I am struggling. Lately, my thoughts keep coming back to navigating urban living as a single woman.