We'll continue reflecting on the shift in mindfulness practices from the religious to the secular, including what happened when a mindfulness instructor (with a background in sustainable agriculture) led meditation retreats for executives at Monsanto in the 1990s.

“When you're a performer, when you're on stage, there's no thinking…You'd think that the anxiety would be at its peak. And it's not.” – Conan O’Brien

“A craving is the sense that something is missing. It is the desire to change your internal state.”–James Clear

“When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to try to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it.”–John Welwood

In honor of Friday's youth climate strike, our discussion will respond to some advice by Heather Havrilesky to someone struggling with climate anxiety, which applies to other forms of anxiety too, I think.

"Life is all about growth and change. It’s not static. It’s not about some destination. It’s not about answering the question once and for all and then it’s all done.” Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

See, private perfection is very well disguised egotism, very well-disguised narcissism. It doesn't make you a loving person. As if I could be loving apart from loving you, or perfect apart from honoring your gifts.

If we aspire to fulfill human potential, overcome sorrow and complaint, end discontent, and attain the flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind, there are mental processes that can hinder that.

The last thing we’re asked to be mindful of is "whatever our minds can remember, imagine, think, create, or produce by way of mental processes." Yikes!

Like death, the time of illness is uncertain, and the only thing that can help us in times of illness is how we’ve trained our mind. But, how does this training training translate to caregiving?

As an old Zen monk once said to a group of us in his extremely thick Japanese accent, “Some people say there is mind. I say there is no mind, but never mind! Heh, heh, heh!”—Daniel M. Ingram

"We are systematically numbed to the increasingly uninhabitable and unacceptable state of our modern world, legs crossed, starting at our navels, self-regulating and controlling our emotions."–Kelly Wendorf

“Working on ourselves when we are in the middle of our own chaos and distress is a challenging task. But what else is there to do?” – Lama Surya Das

“It feels like emotions just come at us, and there is nothing we can do. But we might have it backwards.”–Invisibilia

Leaven’s Friday Freshness and Waking Up Communities hosted a day of mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.

In what might be the most counterintuitive mindfulness exercise, we explore how comparing this body to a corpse can lead us to liberation.

We continue our exploration of the body by considering the stuff that it (and everything else in the material world) is made of.

“Even if we've already dealt with the actual causes of stress and calmed our minds, our bodies may remain convinced there is a tiger after us, because we haven't signaled to it that we're safe by having run away really fast and then experiencing a sense of relief and celebration.”

“All these trips that we lay on ourselves—the heavy-duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy, and the addictions of all kinds—never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun.”

What does this week’s excerpt from the original mindfulness text have to do with Albert Einstein, haircuts, autopsies, racism, and a creepy episode from an old-time radio show?