Contemplations
Short essays drawn from the books, for the days when your mind speaks so loudly that you cannot hear yourself.
Inner stillness is not reserved for monasteries and mountaintops. It can be found in the middle of deadlines, traffic, travel, and small children. Hurry is not a fact of your schedule but a decision of the mind, and stillness is available underneath...
ReadThe "I" you take yourself to be is a pattern of thoughts, not your true nature. When thoughts are present, the identity seems solid and real. When thoughts fall silent, it is simply not there, and yet you still are.
ReadAttention is the truest thing you can give, to another person or to your own life. Words offered without it are only hollow echoes, and love expressed without it is only an idea. To give something your full attention, without judging it,...
ReadSilence is not the absence of something. It is already here, under the noise, and you can hear it if you stop trying to make anything of it. Give your attention to silence for one day and see what happens to your...
ReadThe mind cannot be quieted by force. Every attempt to stop thinking is itself another thought, another movement of the very thing you are trying to still. Compulsive thinking loosens its grip not when you struggle against it, but when you simply...
ReadStop for a moment and sit quietly, alone, in an empty room. That is the whole instruction. It is not meditation and it is not a technique, and what it shows you is where most of your trouble comes from.
ReadPain and suffering are not the same. Pain is what happens; suffering is the mind's resistance to what happens. When you stop fighting the moment as it is, the suffering dissolves, even when the pain remains.
ReadYou have never once lived anywhere but here and now. The past exists only as memory arising in the present, and the future only as expectation arising in the present. Time is something the mind experiences, not a place you can travel...
ReadYou are the flame of a candle in the wind. You do not choose the direction the wind blows, and you were never meant to. You are not in control of your life. You are life itself.
ReadFulfillment is not something you reach by achieving enough. It is not waiting at the end of the next goal, and no accomplishment has ever delivered it for long. It is found in who you already are, and it tends to appear...
ReadYou do not have to become perfect to be at peace. Perfection is an idea in the mind, not a real place you can arrive at, and reaching for it has never once delivered the love or the rest you were hoping...
ReadYou carry big stories and small ones, and together they feel like your life. But a story is a wave on the surface of the ocean, and you are the ocean.
ReadPsychological fear points to something that does not exist. It is the mind defending its own image of itself, always some form of the fear of death, even when no danger is present. This is different from the natural instinct that keeps...
ReadForgiveness is not something another person has to earn from you. It is an expression of your own deepest nature, always available, waiting only on your willingness. When you refuse to forgive, what you are really holding onto is fear, and underneath...
ReadMost of a human life is spent trying to become something: calmer, better, further along. But you were never made of becoming. You are made of being, and being asks nothing of you.
ReadYou are not only a tiny figure caught up in the world’s never-ending movement; you are the one the whole dance belongs to. A dance cannot exist without a dancer, and when you stop losing yourself in the steps and simply watch,...
ReadInner stillness and a silent mind are not the same thing. A quiet mind is only a state that comes and goes. Stillness is what is already there underneath every state, and it is revealed through silence rather than produced by it.
ReadThe peace you feel in nature is not coming from the landscape. It is your own inner stillness, reflected back to you. Snow, sea, wind, birds, and light are doorways, not sources, and they are always quietly inviting the mind to fall...
ReadLiving well may be far less effortful than you think. A bird does not fly by force; it rides the wind. A fish does not fight the water; it is carried by it. Much of what we call struggle is simply the...
ReadThe effort to attain peace is what stands between you and peace. Seeking is a movement of the mind, and peace is found only where that movement ceases. This is also why true meditation is not a method for producing a calm,...
ReadA gift to begin with
Thirty short pieces on peace and clarity, as a PDF, and a note from me when something new is published. No noise. Leave whenever you like.