Mindful breathing is a wonderful way to calm the body and your feelings, and to restore stillness and peace. It’s not difficult to breathe mindfully. Anyone can do it — even children. When you breathe mindfully, you bring your whole body and mind into harmony, concentrating on the wonder of the breath. Our breathing is
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Let us explore how the seven concentrations and deep insights into reality can shine light on our situation, our suffering. If while reading you find yourself in unfamiliar terrain, just breathe. These quotes are a journey we make together, like taking a walk through the forest, enjoying the breathtaking wonders of our precious planet. Occasionally
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The teaching of the Buddha is very clear, effective, and simple to understand. It opens up a path of living, not just for our personal benefit, but for our whole species. We have the power to decide the destiny of our planet. Buddhism offers us the clearest expression of humanism we have ever had. It
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We need to use our mindfulness, concentration, and insight in order to understand what it means to be alive and what it means to die. We can speak of scientific and spiritual discoveries as “insights†and the practice of nourishing and sustaining those insights as “concentration.†~ With the insights of science and spirituality, we
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We can also explore four additional concentrations on impermanence, non-craving, letting go, and nirvana. These four practices are found in Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing, a wonderful text from early Buddhism. The concentration on impermanence helps free us from our tendency to live as though we and our loved ones will be here
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There are three fundamental practices to help liberate us from these three wrong views: the concentrations on emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness. They are known as the Three Doors of Liberation and are available in every school of Buddhism. These three concentrations offer us a deep insight into what it means to be alive and what
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Putting a ‘Voice’ to Mental Mind Processes These Voices that represent the many facets of our thought processes Fall into a few main category types. The Guardians Have instinctually become the animalistic sense of self In charge of protecting the self The Controller Wants to control everything, loss of control is a big concern Wants
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This process compartmentalizes the countless parts of our mind and how “it” thinks about certain situations. These mental departments become overwhelmed. Since we are not typically in True Awareness of our many mental capacities, These ‘voices’ carry on in the mind as if they are in charge. In other words, These departments of egos, distract
The development of Wisdom. Though right concentration claims the last place among the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, concentration itself does not mark the path’s culmination. The attainment of concentration makes the mind still and steady, unifies its concomitants, opens vast vistas of bliss, serenity, and power. But by itself it does not suffice
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Right Effort The power of sustained concentration, itself required as the support for insight-wisdom. Wisdom is the primary tool for deliverance, but the penetrating vision it yields can only open up when the mind has been composed and collected. Right concentration brings the requisite stillness to the mind by unifying it with undistracted focus on
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Our business was doing great, but we still couldn’t afford to buy a house or a condo. Renting in Maui for another 30 years was not an option we wanted to take. Then, Bobbie Jo suggested we buy a sailboat that is comfortable to cruise and live in. By the end of January, we started looking for our new home.
After a long search, we found our dream boat in Mazatlan, Mexico. COVID-19 was not yet a concern when our boat hunt began, but masks were starting to appear at airports by the time we flew to Mazatlan. Originally, we had planned to get the boat ready as fast as possible to cover a full calendar for the busy wedding season. However, it was apparent our business was going to tank amid the pandemic, and the struggle went on until the end of the year.
Luckily, we scored an awesome condo for only $19 a day at Mazatlan. On the 10th day of our stay, we received the news that all harbors will be closed the next Monday morning. We thought we’d be stuck in Mexico longer, but another sailor advised us to leave before sunrise.
We felt the adrenalin of escaping the Mexican harbor master just before the sun rose that faithful day. The seas were rough as waves were building up in the tight channel that led us to the open ocean. We ended up anchored off an adorable little isle just a mile offshore. We enjoyed cruising to many spectacular anchorages and cute villages on our way to Puerto Vallarta, where we would depart for Maui on May 7. On May 30, 2020, we completed our 24-day passage from Mexico to Maui.
