Tag: Meditation

  • The Rapture of Being Alive

    The Rapture of Being Alive

    It seems hard to believe, but one of the best selling Zen books for all time, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, was published over 50 years ago. There is a chapter on Excitement, where Suzuki Roshi admonishes that Zen is not some kind of excitement but concentration on our everyday routines: “If we become interested in some…

  • Replenishment, Starting Close In

    Replenishment, Starting Close In

    This article was originally published on the Mindful Leader blog in August 2022 “I have nothing left.” It’s a sentiment that’s been in our shared consciousness for a long time, and recently I’ve started to hear folks actually name it. Maybe you have too. World events have taken their toll, and many of us find…

  • I Am Not Me Without You

    I Am Not Me Without You

    This post was originally published on the Mindful Leader blog in January 2022. A few weeks ago I had the privilege of witnessing the certification of a new group of Integral Coaches: a powerful rite of passage that is the culmination of a year of hard work, dedicated practice, and profound growth. At the close…

  • Sensing Another’s True Nature

    Sensing Another’s True Nature

    Often when we meet someone for the first time, we introduce ourselves by saying what we do, where we live, what we enjoy. Rarely do we speak about the most elusive yet most important aspect of our lives: who we are. This is very possibly because we don’t know, not really. This is because each…

  • The Tiger, The Strawberry, and the Role of Beauty

    The Tiger, The Strawberry, and the Role of Beauty

    There is a well-known Zen story about a rather non-conventional response to impending doom. A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him…

  • Balancing Ourselves Using the Six Streams of Competence

    Balancing Ourselves Using the Six Streams of Competence

    This post was originally published on the Mindful Leader blog in April 2020. In these times of massive change and disruption, many of us are looking inward to see how we can be of greater support to our communities and the world. Integral Coaching, which is a sustainable, self-generating framework for developing ourselves and others,…

  • Work-Life Balance: Setting Boundaries from Within

    Work-Life Balance: Setting Boundaries from Within

    Work-life balance and boundaries In a world that’s becoming faster paced by the minute, work-life balance is a hot topic. In particular, we talk a lot about boundaries: recognizing we need them, developing the competency to assert them (usually by saying “no”), and vigilantly maintaining them so that we’re not overextending and neglecting what is…

  • Allowing The Mystery Back In

    Allowing The Mystery Back In

    I recently spent a week meditating with 90 other people without talking. We ate, slept, walked and sat next to each other, the whole time in silence and avoiding eye contact, like peaceful zombies. I had no information about my fellow zombies. But by the week’s end, they each had a persona in my head,…

  • Nothing to do but “be with”

    Nothing to do but “be with”

    Each year in late November, around Thanksgiving, I begin a cycle of reflection. As the daylight hours become shorter and dark hours grow longer, it feels like time begins to slow down. Turning inward, I reflect on how life is turning out for me: What is the quality of life that I am experiencing? What…

  • Friendship

    Friendship

    In the last few weeks I have been moved on many occasions by the central importance of friendship. Perhaps it started in New Orleans, where I was taking a workshop on the Pointing Out Way of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Meditation, when two new acquaintances, Jerry and Barb, a married couple, took it upon themselves to show…