I’d like to offer some of my central practices that help me grapple with the First Noble Truth, particularly focusing on skillful means. In this talk at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center I go over some ways to cultivate the feeling of being for something,...
Feeling safer is a tricky subject, with complications that can be both personal and political. (This topic and others are explored in depth in my interview with New Dimensions.) Yes, there are real threats out there, but evolution and other factors have left a lot of us...
This series of blog posts is about Your Precious Life: what an incredible opportunity it is to have a life. At all. To fulfill that opportunity, we need a fundamental orientation inside that treats our life as if it matters. As if our happiness is important,...
Rick's Picks is a new series of posts highlighting the very best content online. Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006, and in August 2007 he was given a terminal diagnosis. He gave...
Attention tends to move around, but something often bubbles to the surface at the front of our awareness. Even if we’re trying to focus just on the breath, the attention tends to wander from one part of the body to the next. In this mindfulness meditation...
Is it about you? The Practice: Don't take it personally. Why? Here’s an updated parable from the ancient Taoist teacher, Chuang-Tzu: Imagine that you are floating in a canoe on a slow-moving river, having a Sunday picnic with a friend. Suddenly there is a loud thump on the side...
This is the fourth and final post in the series on developing mindful presence. Here's Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. In Part Three we did a little mindfulness meditation to "tune-up" our mindfulness and concentration skills. Now we are going to distill that mindfulness meditation...
Here is the latest talk from the San Rafael Meditation group with Rick Hanson. It is titled Be the Whole, Not the Part. More information on the San Rafael Mediation group can be found at https://rickhanson.net/multimedia/audio/talks/buddhist-wisdom/....