By Kelly McGonigal — 2020
Moving your body is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your mind.
Read on greatergood.berkeley.edu
CLEAR ALL
Roxanne Dault, Meido Moore, and Lopön Charlotte Z. Rotterdam discuss what it means to understand Buddhism through the body — the heart of the Buddhist path.
Question: Buddhist teachers, including the Dalai Lama, often speak of happiness as a goal (if not the goal) of Buddhist practice. I don’t begrudge anyone happiness, but making it so central to spiritual life feels self-serving. Am I misunderstanding what’s meant by “happiness”?
It’s surprisingly easy to achieve lasting happiness — we just have to understand our own basic nature. The hard part, says Mingyur Rinpoche, is getting over our bad habit of seeking happiness in transient experiences.
1
The sun doesn’t stop shining just because there are clouds in the sky. Our buddhanature is always present and available, even when life gets difficult.
The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice isn’t about achieving mental health.
Envy can be turned into joy for the very person you envy.
Like many Westerners, I always assumed that meditation was a “spiritual” phenomenon, which I took to mean that it somehow had to do with realms beyond the physical.
In this essay, I discuss what enduring happiness means according to the Buddhist perspective and the ways in which the Dalai Lama embodies this enduring happiness.
The practice of meditation is a journey of return to who we really are, says Zen teacher Norman Fischer. We come home to the body—so vulnerable, ever-changing, magnificent—because it is “the soil in which understanding grows.” It is the vehicle of enlightenment.