Category Archives: Blogs
IN PRAISE OF POETRY
Dear Friends
Many of us may not be particularly interested in Poetry, to write it or to go out of our way to read it. However, when we are Mindful – connecting to life in a direct perceptive way through our senses, then life in Poetry becomes both experienced and expressed.
My poetry below invites us to look, learn and live in this special way.
John B.
IN PRAISE OF POETRY
As we come to our senses
Through Mindful Knowing;
Through Receptive Awareness;
Through Conscious Clarity;
Through Perceptive...
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RIGHT BEFORE US!
Dear Friends
So often we put ‘our self’ before others and things that may actually be more important than the ‘us – I – me - self’. This also occurs in putting our self before what is Real and True and in particular what is the Truth of Reality. This becomes a continual source of stress and suffering for our self!
Real Freedom- Peace comes from Insight, which results from the Mind-Sight of what is Real and Right before seeing engages...
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NIBBANA IS THE END OF TIME
Dear Friends
Have we ever had a moment of no-time, a time out of or beyond time?
Most of us have had this experience at some time or another!
Often we describe it as ‘time stood still!’
However what may have been happening for us is that the ‘mind stood still’!’
Here no thinking, no mental creating of a past or future or even a someone to be caught up in time.
On these timeless occasions we may feel Profound Peace; the feeling of simply...
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THE ONE PRACTICE
Dear Friends, in our world of increasing complexity and contradictions, it may become challenging to choose the particular practice or type of meditation that may serve and secure a calm and clarity; a realisation of reality; purification of the mind from psychic irritants allowing perennial peace and enabling full and final Freedom.
However, from a Buddhist appreciation and perspective, one practice has been offered that brings about this possibility.
This is the Meditation Practice of the Foundations for Mindfulness – Satipatthana.
My...
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OF SILENCE, SPACIOUSNESS AND STILLNESS
Dear Friends
We so often get caught up in the objects of attention and forget that all that we can know and experience is only because of the ‘three non-things’ of Silence, Spaciousness and Stillness.
Our Mindfulness and Meditation Practice help to remember and re-mind back to this fundamental purity and simplicity which is known as Perfect Peace.
Enjoy my verse below that emphasises this possibility.
John B.
OF SILENCE, SPACIOUSNESS AND STILLNESS
And when the Silence comes;
Be not fearful or afraid.
Remain Mindful, aware, the...
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RUN TO THE PRESENT
Dear Friends
Do we find ourselves always on the run?
What are we running from and where are we running to?
Often, we are running from the only place and point to be and to live our life from – the ‘Just here – just now Present’.
So why not challenge this and change this, so that we run from being caught in the past and stop chasing after the future, and really arrive on the spot of our life with mindful awareness.
Just...
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Drawn Into Life, Activity Rather Than Object
Dear Friends
We do not need to be too much of a psychologist or scientist to look, see, notice and note, how and why we stress and suffer. With mindfulness we can observe the process of the mind becoming identified with objects of awareness and becoming them, turning mental-physical phenomena into the personal self. With Mindfulness for Insight Meditation Practice – Satipatthana Vipassana, we can not only see this occurring but allow the mind to remain in knowing the Activity...
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MINDFULNESS IS THE WAY!
Dear Friends
Our Mindfulness collects mental energy and connects mental awareness to the ongoing flow of the experience which we call Life. Without Mindfulness we can miss many moments and much of life, as well as the possibility of freedom from the source of psychological stress and suffering.
Of any and of all the psychological or spiritual practices worth pursuing and practicing; Mindfulness would be the main and most important. Mindfulness is the calm and clear-minded, correct and direct, conscious way...
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Mindful Experience – Pure and Simple
Dear Friends
Much of the stress, struggle, stain and suffering of our life relates to our mind’s unskillful identification with physical or mental experience; creating, conditioning and compounding an identity. That identity or ego-I, continues to need to be feed and fuelled, serviced and supplied with ongoing mental-physical experience to be sustained. This is the ‘my-making’, ‘I-making’, ‘me-making’, that is both tiring and taxing of precious time and energy.
Our Insight – Vipassana Meditation practice through the Four Foundations of Mindfulness,...
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THE PRACTICE OF MINDFULNESS
Dear Friends
I recently spent 10 days on a Mindfulness Meditation – Vipassana Retreat, held at Bodhi Tree Forest Monastery and Retreat Centre, lead by Venerable Pannyavaro. This was a wonderful occasion and experience of simplifying and slowing life down, relaxing into silence and inner stillness. Days of Mindful Sitting and Walking Meditation in the context of Vipassana – Insight Wisdom, allowed for a natural unfolding of clarity and peace.
Beyond the hustle and bustle of our busy regular life, there...
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