Table of contents for The Mindfulness Toolkit in The Mindfulness Toolkit

Want to bring mindfulness—and the calm, clarity, and kindness it cultivates—into everything you do in your day-to-day life? That’s what The Mindfulness Toolkit is all about. Whether your motivation is simply to lower your blood pressure, to walk the path to enlightenment, or anything in between, the practices and advice here will get you on your way. The practice of mindfulness may have become mainstream recently, but Buddhists have been doing it for thousands of years. It’s kind of a Buddhist specialty. But make no mistake: mindfulness is for everyone. Mindfulness is for you. So, in The Mindfulness Toolkit, you’ll find some of today’s finest Buddhist teachers and writers explaining how you—whether you’re Buddhist, “spiritual but not religious,” identify with some other religion, or no religion at all—can make mindfulness…

WHO IS ENJOYING THIS TEA? Ask yourself this question with each sip. When you encounter that person, let them go. You need a break from their story now and then. Otherwise your tea break will not really be a break at all. Constantly rehearsing the story of our roles, obligations, and commitments wears us down. Yes, we may be mothers, doctors, servers, or office workers, but at the core, we are more than these things. We are “breath-breathing humans,” as the Sufi poet Rumi said. Whatever your story, you are more than that story. Get in touch—and stay in touch—with the breath-breathing human you are as you enjoy your tea. “Just this,” remind yourself with each sip. “Just this.” Sit and breathe like a flower in a meadow, enjoying the…

THERE ARE TWO WAYS of seeing, and they perceive different types of objects. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call these sensory seeing and conceptual seeing. Sensory seeing perceives things that appear to our senses, and conceptual seeing perceives things that appear to the mind’s eye. Here’s an example. You go into a restaurant for dinner and sit at a table by yourself. Instead of taking out your phone or a book, you look around at the other customers. You might see an old couple with their granddaughter sitting in a booth, a good-looking young man at a far table, and three expensively dressed women dining together near you. Sensory seeing takes in the colors and textures of the environment—the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and so on. All the rest of your…

OUR HABITS ARE STRONG, so a certain discipline is required to step outside our cocoon and receive the magic of our surroundings. Pause practice—taking three conscious breaths at any moment when we notice that we are stuck—is a simple but powerful practice that each of us can do at any given moment. Pause practice can transform each day of your life. It creates an open doorway to the sacredness of the place in which you find yourself. The vastness, stillness, and magic of the place will dawn upon you, if you let your mind relax and drop for just a few breaths the story line you are working so hard to maintain. If you pause just long enough, you can reconnect with exactly where you are, with the immediacy of your…

CONNECT WITH YOUR BREATH The breath is a powerful reminder of your anxiety-reducing connection with others, says KAMILAH MAJIED. Though we tremble before uncertain futures / may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength / may we dance in the face of our fears.—Gloria E. Anzaldúa, in this bridge we call home THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has been a challenging experience; we should reflect on the wisdom we’ve gleaned from it. Notice the insights you’ve gained about how to be with yourself when you can’t be with others. We have been learning how to manage the anxious loneliness that often occurs and accrues as we limit our physical contact with people. We often associate loneliness with sadness, but loneliness also has an anxious quality. The yearning to be social, to…

I WAS AT A RETREAT on loving-kindness when it came time for the particpants to send goodwill to what traditional Buddhist texts call the Enemy, but that we in the West more gently to refer to as the Difficult Person. She sprang immediately to mind, a slender woman who walked a white German Shepherd. Once we’d chatted about baking bread. More recently I’d been sweeping dead leaves in the driveway when she’d let her dog dart in and attack my new puppy. After I dragged him to safety with the leash, my difficult person remarked with an odd grin that her dog was provoked by “the submissive breeds.” I silently offered her the traditional phrases: “May you be safe, happy, healthy, and live with ease.” And then, my mind added,…

WHEN I MOVED from England to the U.S., I fell in love with America’s vast wilderness and bountiful areas of natural beauty. As a longtime meditator, I had spent many years practicing indoors in meditation halls. But it wasn’t until I began exploring the natural terrain here that I began to see what an invaluable support nature can be for our hearts, our minds, and our overall well-being. Seeking this support, I have spent much of the past two decades in an exploration of the relationship between meditation and nature. This has taken me to remote places in Alaska, ancient sandstone canyons in the southwest, and the rugged beauty of the Sierra Nevada. No matter where I’ve traveled, I’ve received valuable teachings along the way. I’ve learned how nature allows…

WHEN I TEACH people how to use the breath to calm the mind and focus attention, I often mention something the Buddha said: that you should know, upon awakening, whether an inhalation or an exhalation is happening. He also said that while you’re falling asleep, you should realize, “Falling asleep inhaling” or “Falling asleep exhaling.” People generally laugh when I say this, registering some disbelief. But I do not take that instruction literally. “What I think it means,” I tell them, “is that we should pay attention all day long, morning till night, in all activities. “The goal,” I continue, “is not to become a breathing expert, or even an excellent meditator. The goal is to see clearly the causes and the possible end of mental suffering. It’s to experience,…

FIND A CALM SPACE and sit comfortably. Try to view what you experience as neither bad nor good. Sit at ease and let the sounds in. Feel your body; allow the sensations in your body to be present and not blocked off. Include everything in your experience (annoying or not); allow all of it to arise. Without the veneer of opinion, preconception, and explanation, find the place of intimacy within yourself. Once you do, you’re like a tuning fork. Everything is fresh. Now you are ready for the exercises. EXERCISE FOR WORKING ALONE OR WITH A GROUP Set a timer for ten minutes. Try to write continuously for the whole time without stopping to look back or edit what you’ve written. Write about effort in terms of the kind of…

BE SEATED AND RELAX DEEPLY. Don’t hold onto anything. Completely let go of thinking and judging mind while gently maintaining the clarity and knowing aspects of mind. Now raise your arms to shoulder height, pause, and let them drop suddenly to your knees. As you drop your arms, breathe out forcefully. Then say, “Who cares? So what? Svaha!” (Svaha is a Sanskrit word used frequently in mantras that means “So be it.”) Whatever happens, wherever you land after dropping your arms, just let it be. Don’t do or try to block anything. Just rest. There is no need to search for something new or try to achieve some special insight or state. Feel whatever feelings and sensations arise and be lightly aware of them. Feel them naturally and softly, and…

A BROWN-ROBED NUN led me down a hallway lined with doors. She opened one, but he wasn’t there, though the table inside was set with tea. Then she opened another and there, behind door number two, was the renowned monk. Thich Nhat Hanh was stretched out on a green hammock, drinking oolong tea from a clear cup and nibbling on candied ginger. He very kindly insisted that I also enjoy some tea and ginger, but I had trouble being mindful of the flavors—I was too nervous about the interview I was launching into. Yet there was no reason for that. Thich Nhat Hanh chatted with me at length, with all his characteristic warmth and profundity. You created the five mindfulness trainings to be a distillation of Buddhism’s four noble truths…

“I like to think of mindfulness as simply the act of conscious living. You don’t have to be a Buddhist or a yogi to practice it. In fact, if you know anything about Buddhism, you will know that the most important point is to be yourself and not try to become anything that you are not already. The overall tenor of mindfulness practice is gentle, appreciative, and nurturing. Another way to think of it would be “heartfulness.”…

IN THE TIBETAN BUDDHIST tradition, we recognize compassion as both the highest spiritual ideal and the highest expression of our humanity. The Tibetan word for compassion, nyingje, which literally means the “king of heart,” captures the priority we accord compassion. In Compassion Cultivation Training, an eight-week program I developed, we begin every session with a practice called setting your intention. This is a contemplative exercise adapted from traditional Tibetan meditation, a kind of checking-in where we connect with our deeper aspirations so that they may inform our intentions and motivations. In everyday English, we often use the words intention and motivation interchangeably as if they mean the same thing. But there’s an important difference: deliberateness. Our motivation to do something is the reason or reasons behind that behavior, the source…

TAMI SIMON: What are the parallels between the meditative process and the creative process? K.D. LANG: I think it’s exactly the same thing. It’s about getting rid of the chatter and finding the gap in between. I think real creativity comes from getting the heck out of the way. Creativity is not about creating big conceptions and stirring the pot so much that you just gotta throw up on the canvas. I think it comes from being bored and empty. Likewise, I’m not a great meditator, but I think meditation is about getting out of the way of your true nature, which is stillness. PEMA CHÖDRÖN: When you get over yourself, even briefly, that’s when creativity happens. That includes being able to speak in a way that communicates to the…

“RIGHT NOW, IT’S LIKE THIS”: It’s a phrase whose usage has caught on among some Buddhist communities, and you may have even heard non-Buddhists using it. Here, meditation teacher Vinny Ferraro explains to Lion’s Roar where the phrase comes from, why so many—himself included—find it helpful, and provides complementary meditation instructions. Thanks for exploring this with us, Vinny. This phrase—“Right now, it’s like this”—how does it come to us? It comes from the Buddhist teacher, Ajahn Sumedho. My introduction to the phrase happened twelve years ago when he was teaching a retreat in Moscow. It was a ten-day retreat and the conditions (like all conditions) were less than perfect. I saw him working with “what is,” using this phrase and a smile. It really moved me. From that point on…

TODAY I TOOK A LONG WALKthrough the high desert woods of the Cerro Gordo Mountains. I’ve never taken this walk before, so I stepped cautiously around gnarly tree roots, keeping my attention bright in the hopes of avoiding a twisted ankle or stepping on the baby snakes sunning on the trail. Walking like a model, one foot in front of the other, I crossed a narrow plank over the mountain creek and hopped onto a dusty path that eventually dumped me out on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For the last nine days I’ve been on retreat at Upaya Zen Center, which backs up to this trail. There is a meditative quality of presence that informs all aspects of retreat, whether we are sitting, standing, washing dishes, or…

IN OUR DAILY LIVES, it can be challenging to simply be with what is, and to fully inhabit our bodies and our experience. Our minds and bodies can often be stuck in “go” mode. The invitation of the Buddha is to return home to the here and now, to look deeply at life as it is, and to use each moment of our life as our meditation practice. One of the first steps in cultivating this capacity is noticing and smiling to our restlessness, and bringing a loving and kind attention to the seemingly mundane moments of our life. We’re sitting and we decide to open the window. The next thing we’re aware of is that we’re at the window; we haven’t been present for the time in-between. Walking meditation…

“Practicing mindfulness as mere mental gymnastics leaves us feeling more depleted.” IN ONE OF HIS EARLIEST teachings, the Buddha praised mindfulness: “The Noble Eightfold Path is nourished by living mindfully.” From the beginning, the path of awakening includes all aspects of our human lives: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social. The aim is a mindful life. This means that our relationship to our sexuality and our consumerist economic system, our parenting, and our politics are all part of the path. This approach to living fully is outlined in the eightfold path that the Buddha upheld as the way to enlightened living. “Right mindfulness” is one aspect of that path, alongside right view, right intention, right effort, right meditative engagement, right speech, right livelihood, and right action. The Sanskrit word samyak—often…