The Benefits of a Daily Mindfulness Meditation Practice

What is that one thing that is typical in all of us these days? What is it that we all go through on a daily basis? Yes, it is stress. Our life is governed by the stress we experience and things we worry about. Stress and worry are constants in our daily routine. We stress…

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The Earliest Buddhist Teaching on Living in the Present Moment

Our Appointment With Life: Discourse on Living Happily in the Present Moment is a translation of, and commentary on, the Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone by Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. This sutra – or basic text of Buddhist scripture – is the earliest teaching of the Buddha on how…

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Ram Dass on the Paradox of Suffering

The spiritual teacher Ram Dass often examines human suffering in his many lectures and writings, since it concerns us all. As the First Noble Truth of Buddhism says, “life is dukkha” (a Pali term commonly translated as “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness”, although its meaning is quite varied, since impermanence is also dukkha). It may seem like…

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A Buddhist Perspective on Gossiping

“Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.” – Joseph Conrad The Noble Eightfold Path is traditionally considered to be the essence of Buddhist practice, and it is intended to help people escape the unease and unsatisfactoriness which is intrinsic to the human condition. The First Noble Truth in Buddhism (of which…

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Speculations on the Aesthetic Appreciation of Geometry

Humans have been attracted to geometric shapes and patterns for thousands of years. Geometry has not only been used for the description of physical reality – from the time of Euclid’s Elements to string theory today – it has also been imbued with a sense of the mystical and the beautiful. Sacred geometry, for example,…

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