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Mindfulness of Aging Part 2

So what do we do with our aging thoughts? How can we transform them from exercises in comparison and regret into more wholesome insights that nourish us? (If you are tuning in to this blog for the first time, read the last post, “Mindfulness of Aging part I”.)

There are three parts to transforming mindfulness:  clarity, insight, and re-centering.

Clarity means to know what is actually going on.  In practice it means to drill down beneath the superficial thought that our mindfulness has made us aware of (such as the thought, “I guess I’ll never go to Africa…”) to the … Read More

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Mindfulness of Aging Part I

In this post I’d like to explore the practice of “Mindfulness of Aging.”  Mindfulness is one of the basic practices in Buddhism, but the precise reasons why it is effective (particularly in chronic pain management) are not yet well understood.  Mindfulness is sometimes characterized in Buddhist texts as “bare noting,” and is often coupled with a word or phrase, such as, “Now I have a long breath.”

Mindfulness, in common parlance, is “noticing what is going on,” particularly about an internal mental, emotional or physical state.  It is basic awareness, or wakefulness, as opposed to unconscious, or automatic, or (as … Read More

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The Candle Flame Burns Just as Brightly

amazing-sunrise1A woman in her fifties recently told me about a dream she had had.  In the dream she was at a party and saw a tall, attractive man in his early thirties standing alone with a drink in his hand.  The woman went over to talk to the man; in the dream she was young again and single, and this situation meant a possible romantic opportunity. With a winning smile, she tried to engage the man in conversation, only to find that his gaze had alighted elsewhere, and with a curt nod and a polite smile, the man excused himself … Read More

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Routines

I remember a remarkable episode of the old Bill Cosby show, in which Dr. Huxtable and his wife surprise Dr. Huxtable’s father on his birthday with the gift of an all-expenses trip for two to Paris.  His father is touched, grateful, and a trifle embarrassed.

“We can’t go,” he says sheepishly to his son. “Why not?” Dr. Huxtable says.  “You’ve always wanted to go to Europe.”

“Well,” the father says, “I’m used to getting up in the morning, getting the New York Times from the front porch, and sitting… Read More

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Don’t Worry, Leave ‘Em Alone!

As readers may be discovering, I like cinema moments as teaching tools.  The one I am thinking of today is in The Untouchables, starring Kevin Costner and Sean Connery.  In one tense scene, federal agents, together with a grizzled veteran Chicago cop (played by Sean Connery) are waiting in an isolated cabin for a convoy of Al Capone’s bootlegger henchmen to cross the Canadian border. The two federal agents are nervously checking and rechecking their weapons.  Sean Connery watches them… Read More

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You Are Not Alone

In my experience as a Buddhist teacher and spiritual guide, for many people the first time the deep truth of aging hits is when our parents become ill and die.  This tends to happen when people are in their 40s, when they themselves still feel young, still remember college and their first jobs, still are energetic, active, and fully productive. I remember one woman in her early forties whose parent died suddenly.  I could see her face change as she grieved and processed her loss; it was as though she was aging before my eyes.  … Read More

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I Want More!

pig“I want more”–this is the universal principle of a society built around consumer spending. And it is, by extension, the cry of all those who want more youth, through all the consumer products and services that we think can make us look, feel or be younger. The Buddhist world view responds, “Relax. It’s all right. You have enough.” But we don’t believe it.

I am thinking of three moments in literature, cinema, and television that all have a character saying, essentially, “I want more.” The first is from the Humphrey Bogart movie Key Largo, where Bogie is up against … Read More

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Aging and the Thought of Enlightenment

tibetan-nunThe “thought of enlightenment,” or bodhicitta, is a key doctrine of Great Vehicle Buddhism. 

Basically it refers that moment in your life when your perspective widens to embrace the big picture, and to ask the big questions.  Why am I here? Why is anything here? What is life all about? Why is there evil in the world? Why do people suffer? Is it possible to change the world? And then follows the earthshaking realization that it might be possible to find answers. And we begin our spiritual search, which in Buddhism is called bodhicitta in the Zen tradition is … Read More

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Encephalitis: The Year I was 90 Year Old

Beginning in July, 1999 I became 90 years old for a year.  What happened? I was struck suddenly with viral encephalitis and within hours was in a coma so deep no doctor thought I could survive.  Obviously I did survive and regained all of my abilities and functions, but it took several years.  I tell about this ordeal in my book Healing Lazarus. Later I would joke with people about the “year I was 90 years old” (no offense to those who are 90 years old and healthy, but that was the phrase that kept popping into my head).  … Read More

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What is a Spiritual Practice?

tree-with-raysI’ve put the phrase “Spiritual Practice” in my blog title, but it may not be clear to many readers what that means. A spiritual practice is something you do with the body, with speech or with thought that evokes or develops the spiritual in us. The most common spiritual practice in the West is prayer. Other familiar spiritual practices are singing hymns, reciting a mantra (or saying a rosary), bowing, and meditation.

I borrowed the phrase “Aging as a Spiritual Practice” from the title of my first book, Work as a Spiritual Practice. In that book I adapted many … Read More