The heart of the Buddha’s teachings revolve around a wise understanding of what is called Dukkha in the Pali language. Dukkha is often translated as suffering, but this word is far too limited to capture the depth & breadth of this crucial term. On one level, Dukkha does point to suffering: to pain & painful feelings associated with bodily life, and the difficult mental & emotional states that arise for all of us at times. But suffering on this level represents only one aspect of Dukkha. On a more subtle level, Dukkha points to qualities of unsatisfactoriness & unreliability that are intrinsic to all conditioned experience whether pleasant or unpleasant.
There’s a basic fragility pervading all of life that is a direct reflection of the fact that everything is in a state of constant flux – a flow of changing conditions that are largely outside of our direct control. This leads to feelings of vulnerability & a subtle but pervasive inner anxiety. Pleasant experiences don’t last & unpleasant ones are unavoidable. Conditions are never fully amenable to our will, and we will never be able to get things to be way we want & then stay that way. Life is not, and never will be, controllable in this way, and the Buddha’s teachings do not offer us the key to this kind of agency.
Not that we are completely helpless in this regard. Opening to Dukkha need not lead us to a state of resignation & defeat. We do our best to 
live well – with grace, integrity, and care – and this does matter. At the same time, we will all experience the full range of joys & sorrows that characterize a life. Dukkha is deeply embedded in the very fabric of existence, and informs our lives constantly & profoundly. The Buddha’s liberation is not about escaping from life’s ups & downs. Life goes on with its joys & sorrows, but suffering in relation to this flow of change is another matter entirely.
Our usual strategy is to fight against or deny the truth of Dukkha but, of course, this never really works & leads to an exhausting & ultimately fruitless struggle. Luckily, the Buddha offers us a radically different strategy, one that enables us to start relating to the truth of Dukkha in a wise way, where we meet the changing conditions we encounter from a place of ease & balance of mind. We stop fighting against the way things are, and move towards harmony & alignment with reality. Through this shift of view & change in strategy, we let go of struggle & touch the possibility of a freedom of mind & heart that is to a profound extent independent of life’s changing conditions. This is true freedom.
An engaging way to teach a course in beginning mindfulness is to hand each new yogi a tangerine when they arrive. They’ll sit down & gingerly hold the fruit as if it’s too hot, occasionally taking discreet glances at it to make sure it really is a tangerine, wondering what it’s for. They soon learn: It’s the object of a guided 30-minute mindfulness meditation. Even experienced yogis graced with Beginner’s Mind find this meditation unexpectedly intriguing. Briefly, this is the guidance:
because of its comprehensiveness in teaching the objects that are the best for cultivating mindfulness through meditation: the body, feeling tones of pleasant-impermanent-unpleasant, the mind, and Dhammas (teachings of the Buddha).
As we enter into this ‘
As we begin to learn & allow ourselves to rest in this stillness more often, a great healing begins to take place… an unbinding, an unwinding of all the conditioning we’ve taken on as 
I used to be a big music fan & listened to it all the time. Now that I don’t deliberately listen to it, I find that when I do happen to hear music, it’s as if I’m hearing it for the first time. Music used to be such a constant presence in my life that it had lost its power. If I hear it now, it has an astonishing quality of freshness. I am with every note, every phrase.
feel that we must own & accumulate things in order to be complete, and not just material objects but people & relationships as well. It is hard for us to understand that letting go is not a loss, not a bereavement. Of course, when we lose something that is beautiful or dear to us, there is a shadow that crosses the heart. But we enlighten that shadow with the understanding that the feeling of loss is just the karmic result of assuming that we owned anything in the first place. The renunciate life is based on the realization that we can never really possess anything.
The Buddha lived in a deeply troubled world. Kings ruled through violence, armies decimated villages, and slavery threaded daily life. Even those close to the Buddha suffered: his supporter 
hostile to one another
The blessings of Autumn are unfolding here in northern New Mexico as is currently happening in many places around the planet. This time of year, the natural world all around us offers abundant Dharma practice opportunities in ordinary & profound ways.
animal and plant, are rooted in the processes of Anicca/change/impermanence. Our bodies, our ideas, likes & dislikes, our emotions… our very life is basically grounded in these same processes that underlie how the natural world shows up & expresses itself. Can you even imagine what it would be like if there were no change? In truth, without Anicca/change/impermanence there would be no life.
We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words. It is an extraordinary privilege to be accorded a human life, with self-reflexive consciousness that brings awareness of our own actions & the ability to make choices. It lets us choose to take part in the healing of our world.
choose to turn to the breath, the body, the senses—for they help us to relax & open to wider currents of knowing & feeling.
Some time before the Buddha was about to die, he gave his disciples a word of encouragement and advice. He said this – and I’m putting it into my own words: “Freedom from suffering is available to you if you practice by the proper means of mindfulness, but not without having the aspiration to learn, and 
with the dharma or that we “should” be doing something else to realize our aspiration. Right here we can remind ourselves that our job is to do what the teachings require of us, working with mindfulness in this moment. Anything more than sincerely doing the practice is a hindrance to it’s unfolding. The wondering when, if, how soon and what else we can do to speed up the process – this is all worry and agitation.
In a world facing deep unrest, the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths offer both clarity and compassion. As taught in the discourse on “
How can we move out of what might be our usual way of doing things & into new territory? Not to escape what may seem or feel like a catastrophe looming around us… looming around the world… but to more fully & clearly meet what is occurring. 
metta, begin to connect with a ‘true’ sense of