As you read this, it is likely to be the week of the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, or perhaps the week of Christmas. Chanukah is often called the Miracle of Lights, and Christmas is the miracle of the birth of Jesus. One way of seeing things is that both are about the miracle of faith, or rather our faith in miracles.

On the final day of my long motorcycle ride back from Colorado to New York, I made a slight detour to visit the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania. This is the site where the fourth plane on 9/11/01 was brought down by the passengers to keep it from crashing into the White House or Congress.

I think it’s important to ask myself “does my practice have an impact in the world”? What difference am I making, if any? I hope you can see the impact your practice has had on your life, and perhaps on the lives of those around you. But what about beyond the range of direct influence? When we develop lovingkindness for all beings, honestly, does it matter?

Something has been on my mind for months, in fact, years. Men, where are you? I spend much of my time in one meditation and mindfulness context or another. Over the last couple of years, the presence of people who identify as men has significantly winnowed down. It's not uncommon for me to be in a meditation group where I am the only man. What’s going on?

Retreat practice may seem “selfish,” in that you are taking this time “for yourself.” You might have the view that you are not contributing to the betterment of the world or being “productive.” In fact, retreat practice is radical! You are expanding your capacity to be with the continual uncertainties and challenges of the world.

“Bhikkhus, all is burning.” This is the first line of what is known as The Fire Sermon a well-known teaching given by the Buddha. It is more specifically dealing with the burning of sense desires—as it goes on, the eyes, ears, tongue, body—etc are all burning with desires. It is this passion of desire—which causes suffering. These words came to my mind as we entered 2020 watching the scenes of the devastating fires in Australia.

I was having a conversation with an artist recently about being frustrated to be “out of the conversation” to not have his art be part of the current scene etc. Part of the issue of course with being a visual artist is that work is created and if it’s not sold or taken by a museum, when the artist dies, much of it may be left in the trash bin—literally or figuratively. Of course, to an artist this would be a rather depressing thought, and this is truly understandable.

I walk into a supermarket or even a farmer’s market and I’m faced with the tyranny of choice. So many options of what I can buy which of course changes my perception of what I actually need. Sometimes my reaction is to freeze in confusion or perhaps I’ll purchase something I don’t really need or decide based on what is most pleasing to the eye. This tyranny of choice has now seemingly hit the field of meditation.

When we take up the practice of meditation and truly bring these practices into our lives, whether in a Buddhist or a modern mindfulness context it is essential that we truly commit to the unknown. That moment, we think we know where we are going, is a moment which unavoidably traps us into believing we are going anywhere. If we put this into the context of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path we can look to Right View—the first factor on the path.

You’ve just completed a meditation class or come home from your first retreat and naturally there is a concern that you will lose the momentum of your practice. Maintaining a daily practice is often the biggest concern for new meditators. One of the important qualities of mindfulness is to “re-collect” so if you re-collect what you’ve gained from meditation so far this can lay the bedrock of right intention and motivate you to keep up a daily practice.

There was an interesting and sad article in the NY Times a few weeks ago regarding a funeral home in the Bronx mixing up two women’s bodies, and presenting the wrong body at an open casket viewing. Almost all the adults believed that they were viewing the body of Val-Jean McDonald. While most of them noticed that she didn’t look as they expected this was attributed to her cancer treatments. So the conditions that created the perception were the trust in the funeral home and the belief that because of how she died she wouldn’t look like herself.

On retreat recently, I found myself in meditation often having intense internal debates about some of the plot twists in the show “Homeland”. I was getting very upset with the decisions made by some of the characters. This was creating an incredible amount of proliferation in the mind and “wasting” valuable minutes of my meditations. If I was going to proliferate at the very least, couldn’t it be about something that was “real” and from my life. Proliferating around a fictional TV drama seemed absurd.