I’m fascinated by religions’ practices and beliefs regarding death. It seems as if every philosophical or religious tradition has some sort of “death meditation” practice. The Stoics included it in their “negative visualization” practice, Christians contemplate the death of Christ at Mass, Jews study it in the Torah, and Muslims understand that there is a

I’m a skeptical guy. My mind naturally looks for flaws in ideas, institutions, processes, cultures, etc. This has affected the way I viewed religion for a long time. In elementary school, I was taught that it was important to “believe” or “have faith” in Jesus. As soon as I was old enough to start questioning

We live in a culture that cultivates excessive focus on the self. My day is filled with thoughts that cycle between what I want, what I don’t want, what I want but don’t have, and what I have but don’t want. Yesterday, as in most days, I was thinking about the type of career I

When I was an elementary school, one of my teachers taught us about Buddhism, as part of a world religions unit.  I remember learning that Buddhists believe in re-incarnation, or re-birth. This fascinated me. I thought it would fun to be reborn as a dog or bird or other animal (it’s clear I didn’t understand

Once again, I can’t say that I’ve increased my ability to concentrate. Because I’ve only been practicing meditation for a very short time, I’m a bit premature in saying this but I suspect that modern productivity techniques may be more effective in cultivating focus, at least on work tasks. For example, I’ve been trying the

Yesterday I caught up with one of my best friends from high school. He had just returned from a vacation to Europe (I was jealous) and was telling me about the laid-back vibe of Barcelona and how it reminded him of Miami (where he went to college) and how he’d like to buy a place

I’m writing this from my hometown of Lexington, MA (yes, the birthplace of America). I’m back for a week or so because my parents just sold their house, and I wanted to a) see it for the last time and b) get my junk out of my room. A few observations about being back: Familiarity

As I mentioned several times over the last few blog posts, meditation is quite a difficult activity. Sitting still in a room and focusing only on the breath or another object of concentration requires significant mental energy, which seems odd considering to an outside observer, all you’re doing is being still. The difficulty of meditation

Becoming a Zen master is really friggin’ difficult, and certainly can’t be accomplished by daily twenty-minute self-guided meditation sessions. This week I tried “testing” myself at work to see if my ability to concentrate and focus increase. I tried working in focused bursts to no avail. I could maybe get about 10-15 minutes of work

Buddhism: Day 12 and 13  The Myers-Briggs Personality Assessment is a popular tool used by individuals and businesses a like to determine where people fall on a number of personality traits. Are you more introverted or extroverted? Do you like big ideas or details? Do you to like to plan to improvise? I’m a fan