Doreen Schweizer An Insight: Twenty years ago, on the fifth day of the annual ten-day New Year’s meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, in an evening Dharma talk, Jack Kornfield said, “Sometimes when the mind is very quiet, you can ask yourself the question: ‘What is the greatest lesson I have…

Doreen Schweizer The removal of the wish to harm as a possibility from the mind is both the ethical function and the ethical fruit of compassionate action. I heard Jon Kabat-Zinn say recently that when reporters ask him for one word to explain mindfulness, he always used to say “awareness,” but now he says “relationality.”…

Doreen Schweizer The real basis of connectedness comes through our actions. When you interact with another person, a connection is made. –– Thanissaro Bhikkhu We act in this world in three ways: speech, action, and thought. In keeping with the current VIMS exploration of the word, concept, and experience of care (apamada in the Pali…

Doreen Schweizer “Continue on with your lives diligently, heedfully, with untiring wakefulness; earnestly, with full attention; appreciatively, mindfully, with vigilance, kindness, and care,” said the Buddha to his closest followers before he died. This statement is an elaboration and paraphrase from a teaching in Digha Nikaya, The Long Discourses of the Buddha called “The Buddha’s…

Doreen Schweizer “… Now it is your turn to stop.” These words about stopping have been important to me since I first heard them; they sound in my ears sometimes on their own, almost sung to me like an important message. They come from a teaching story about a man called Angulimala, a known murderer…

Doreen Schweizer Find rest in the middle of things (Frank Ostaseski’s Third Precept). We think rest comes at the end of something. At the end of the day. At the end of a meeting. When work is done. We think we rest when we change our living conditions, but it is possible to rest right…