“Avoid the unwholesome, cultivate the good and purify the mind – this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.”
This pithy quote from the Dhammapada encapsulates our task when we practice the Buddha’s teachings. It might be a short quote, but it seems like a lot that we have to keep track of when we undertake the practice.
There is a story told during the time of the Buddha of a monk who, like us, wanted to be free from suffering. He was given all the necessary instructions but became disillusioned because there were so many aspects of experience to remember to be mindful of, that he contemplated disrobing.
Fortunately, the Buddha got to hear of the monk’s change of heart, went to him and after listening to how discouraged he was said: “Don’t worry, I will give you only one instruction to follow. If you can keep it, there is nothing more for you to do.” Then the Buddha taught him mindfulness of mind – the third foundation of mindfulness.
“The mind is very hard to perceive, extremely subtle, it flies wherever it likes. Let the wise person guard it, a guarded mind is conducive to 
happiness.”
Using these instructions, we can bring mindfulness to the moment by repeatedly asking ourselves the question: “What’s happening in the mind now?” Are we meeting experience with the defilements of greed, hatred and delusion – or their opposites: renunciation, kindness or compassion, and wisdom?
By checking the mind in this way, we are on the path to ending suffering by not feeding the defilements. Instead, we are bringing about true happiness as we incline the mind towards goodness and wisdom. In this way we are doing the practice of all the Buddhas.
To live in this world
I meditate because when I was younger it was all the rage.
One way we might regard the meditative process is as a kind of scientific field work. The field of study for this investigation is the terrain of our own body & mind, and our main research tool is mindfulness. Our objective in doing this investigation is to learn as much as we can about both the world within us & the world around us.
attitude when we sit down to meditate? Can we trust our ability to meet each moment with attitude that some teachers call: “don’t know mind”. Zen master Suzuki Roshi called this “beginner’s mind“. He once said: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
Going for a walk-in nature calls us to pause & listen to the whispers of our ancestors calling us to remember. I remember our beloved late teacher Thich Nhat Hanh saying,
greatest practitioners of letting go & trusting this cycle of life as the greatest teacher of impermanence. Each day, we honor our teachers who have come before us, as we take in Nature’s natural rhythm of letting go through connecting with our elemental relatives. By witnessing this nature’s flow, which remains ever so fleeting, with each drop of rain, or a gust of wind, or touch of sunshine, all transitioning immediately upon noticing.
That is all we have, this moment with the world. It will not last, because nothing lasts. Entropy, mortality, extinction: the entire plan of the universe consists of losing, and no matter how much we find along the way, life amounts to a reverse savings account in which we are eventually robbed of everything. Our dreams and plans and jobs and knees and backs and memories; the keys to the house, the keys to the car, the keys to the kingdom, the kingdom itself: sooner or later, all of it drifts into the Valley of Lost Things.
In his teachings, the Buddha again & again pointed to the importance of seeing impermanence – the changing nature of all conditioned phenomena. In a well known sutta, he stated that living just one day clearly seeing impermanence, is more important than living a hundred years without seeing impermanence . Deeply recognizing impermanence, in our own lived experience, is described as a potential doorway to liberation – the deepest peace, the unconditioned, nibbana.
A NEW YEAR… A NEW DAY… A NEW MOMENT. This is our ‘time.’ How we fill our time over the years, days and moments is the ‘story’ – the essence of our life.
From all of us here at The Mountain Hermitage… we deeply appreciate you and send boundless gratitude for your interest, support of and participation in our various Dharma offerings.
When we attend to our values, we might begin by reflecting on the Buddha’s exhortation: ‘Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings.’ This is not just because kindness is universal & simple, but because it focuses us directly on the quality of heart that has enabled us to survive & grow. We are born as empathic beings – we’re hard-wired for it with mirror-neurons in our brains – and our success as a species has come from being able to operate as a collective. So a focus on goodwill brings us out of the divisions of nationality, social status, and political systems to connect more directly with a value that can include others. Development of that empathic sense is an aspect of Buddhist ‘mind-cultivation’, and its aim is to develop that sense in a widening field to include all other living beings. The more inclusive the cosmos, the greater its validity. And the awakening fact is that this cultivation is also deeply enjoyable….
materials that come from the Earth & are finite. Given this capacity, our responsibility has to be to develop values that will include & support as much of the cosmos as possible. Values: you name them – how about generosity, goodwill, truthfulness, reliability? It’s not difficult to access the resources of our human nature; putting them into practice takes work, but it is innately fulfilling. On a wider scale, giving value to harmony in our total environment will surely help us to strengthen & enrich our own lives. It will take us out of the sense of being an isolated, competitive self & into the harmony of being part of the cosmos.
“Everything is meditation in this practice, even while eating, drinking, dressing, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking. Whatever you are doing, everything should be done mindfully, dynamically, with totality, completeness, thoroughness. Then it becomes meditation, meaningful, purposeful. It is not thinking, but experiencing from moment to moment, living from moment to moment, without clinging, without condemning, without judging, without evaluating, without comparing, without selecting, without criticizing—choiceless awareness. 
unpleasant feeling, we don’t like it & we condemn. We have to observe it. We have to penetrate it. We have to pierce through it. We have to understand it. When you keep the mind there, then you will see that it is not static; it is a process, and afterward, it disappears. But don’t expect it to come or to go. If you expect, then you have to be aware of the expecting mind. Not clinging, not condemning, not hoping. Whatever comes up, see the thing as it is, at this moment, without liking or disliking. If you like it, you feed it with greed; if you dislike it, you feed it with hatred. Both ways, the mind is unbalanced, unhealthy, unsound. [The] object itself is neither good nor bad. It is our mind which attributes the color—it is good or it is bad. We are influenced by that & then reaction comes. Be gentle with everything that comes up. Keep the mind in a balanced state. We are following the middle path. Be fully alert.”
every possibility of falling down. If you lose your mindfulness, you will hurt yourself or kill yourself. So, in reality, mindfulness means not to forget what is going on at the present moment – in thought, in word, in deed.”