Parallax Press is glad to introduce A Mindful Reader’s Guide. We hope that our new weblog will create an opportunity to bring readers together to discuss, debate, and engage with our books subjects and current issues.
A Mindful Reader’s Guide can be used to connect with the wider world of readers, to coordinate local meetings, and to update people on you discussions. Hopefully, this will be a starting place that will inspire people to join or start a reading group in your local area. To find people interested setting up a more formal meeting, we suggest visiting Reader’s Circle.
Reader’s Groups can develop and work with the themes and questions that are posted by the author, and send in your comments and responses. You can just “leave a comment” for your ideas to be made public.
I love THICH NHAT HANH’S books I have meditated and feel great after. My question is how do I keep the mind at peace and not full of every day life?
Hi Jodie
My practice, to keep my monkey mind at peace, is to always go back to my breathing – three in and out breathes usually brings me back to the wonderful (or sometimes not so wonderful!) present moment. However as mindfulness is all about being present to whatever feelings are arising that is just fine. Every day life is so full of wonder when i remember to practice this. As Thay once said to me “Practice hard Jeanie”. What words of wisdom, it is all about practice, practice and more practice.
Hi Jodie & Jeanie!
I am so grateful for this opportunity to share practice with you.
Thay’s words that “there is no way to peace; peace is the way” really astonished me when I first read/heard them. The reality though was that I didn’t “get” it then. Well, I’m not sure I get it even now!
For me, in this moment, I can feel the struggle of the “every day life” that is today. So many demands, feeling not up to par, so little time! And, at the very same time, layered and folded into that sensation of stress and tension is a feeling of wonder and joy about this experience of writing. What a gift I’ve been given! For a moment, I get to write and share and enjoy the experience of practising.
Try as hard as I might, I don’t think I could have ever deliberately designed a means of feeling that joy and gratitude. And here it is, unfolding letter by letter!
Metta,
Lynette
True Wonderful Fulfillment
“Sometimes we will hit the target
….but miss the self” Onuma Sensei
Kyudo;
(japanese archery)
Living is like this….many influences, pulling….conditioning.
Liberate…and think….in freedom.
Reality embraces mind, and the reality of original thought is possible.
Mind embraces Reality.
A future is then possible.
For the legacy of ‘Dharma’.
“Beyond grateful”.
Forward legacy of ‘Dharma’.
“Behold..practice”.
Hello from Africa…
It’s wonderful to meet you all. Your words are like fresh air.
Be well and do good work.
Jan Hoidge
Wow,
Thanks for your words about practice, practice and more practice. I have moved away from all institutional religions and started working toward finding a core, essential inner self. Breathing, steading, guided walking meditation has been the key. What though, do you do, when an uncomfortable or undesirable feeling overwhelms you and you are tempted to act out negatively?
Thanks,
Dale
No past, no future
Here and Now
Present
That is the key, to know now that you have negativity, is to control it. Not to be aware, is to be uncontrollable. When negativity arises, remove yourself, take refuge, know that you know what is correct. Release, smile, your mind fights the control, yet you are the mind, you are in control. Become the being of action not re-action.
Have compassion for your mind, look on it with love, understand why it re-acts in such a way . Meditate on your reactions, only then will you see that self cherishing is an obsession that we have. A fear that we will lose, get hurt. The ‘I’ or ‘Me’ gets in the way. Know this and you will have the answer. Let go and attain all.
May all beings have the causes for peace and happiness.
Yeshe Tsomo
Hello to all and gretings from catalunya-Spain.
I feel it the same way as Yeshe, when you get aware of , for example, your irritation, you will be able to look at it, smile at it and care for it.
Finnally your irritation will go back to the ”cellar” where it came from as Thai likes to explain. If you are not aware, however, irritation will come over you like bushfire.
love to all
Joan
Speaking from the heart, I feel such gratitude for this space to convey and connect with Thay’s words and yours! The challenge today (as I have have been introduced/re-membered/am beginning) to practice awareness is to find the language to express myself. I am hearing and seeing (as I speak and write) that the words I have used to communicate have come from a lineage of of fear and not so much connection. So how do I say what I am being? lol Have You found this in your practice? Smiles, Cricket
Thank you, Dear Friends on the Path, for your courageous sharings. In our sangha we are studying Record #11 of Master Linji in Thay’s book “Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go”. Linji tells us to have confidence in ourselves and to not be pull away from that center by everything that is put into us from the outside (and then from the inside). Thay’s commentary points out that soemtimes we too can worry that if we speak the truth of our experience we will lose friends, family, jobs, etc. And so, we hesitate.
I look at my life decisions and see that so clearly: the times when I was unable to speak out, to speak to the truth of my own experience, (in Cricket’s words) to “say what I am being”.
When I practise touching the earth or chanting the incense offering or the Heart Sutra, I hear the truth of my life – that inthe words of Master Linji “Today, in every ordinary activity (I) do”, I do not feel I lack anything.
Metta,
Lynette
I feel so happy to know that we have this reader’s group. May we all have peace and love.
Do any of you know of a sangha in Hanford or Visilia or Fresno CA?
Thank you for your help