How do you know if you are prepared to handle the silence, the physical rigors, the discipline, and the mental intensity of a prolonged meditation retreat? Relax. You can't know. You don't need to know. There is no way to prepare. The very notion of preparation traps us in false expectation and self-evaluation. It shows us how often we are paralyzed by the feeling of [...]
About Karen Maezen Miller
Do Dishes, Rake Leaves: The Wisdom of the Ancient Homemakers
Photo by Anne E. Jones. Karen Maezen Miller on how the domestic practice of ancient Zen masters can lead us to intimate encounters with our own lives. In the fall, the broad canopy of giant sycamores in my backyard turns faintly yellow and the leaves sail down. First by ones, and then by tons. A part of every autumn day finds me fuming at the sight of falling leaves. Then, I [...]
How Do I Put My Mind to Rest?
Like the student in this famous koan, we constantly face the challenge of emotional turmoil and restless mind. You don't have to cut off your arm like he did, says Karen Maezen Miller, but you do have to cut off your conflicting emotions at their root. “Would you like to learn to meditate now?” I asked this of a student as we neared the end of the meditation class. I was [...]
Be Sad
Karen Maezen Miller looks at the important role of sadness in life. Photos by Gracie Hagen. We can get so worked up trying to be happy that I wanted to strike a different note to the tune of full disclosure: Sad. What about when you're sad? What about when bad things happen or good things don't? What about tears and [...]
A New Year’s Blessing
Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller offers some words to help us all start the year off right. The New Year is a powerful time in our lives, and by that I mean in our practice. Through no effort of our own, we arrive at a point of culmination. A moment of reflection and renewal. In this span between what we think of as the old and the new, regret can stir. We may be more aware of [...]
5 Steps to Joy
How do we find joy amid chaos? I’ve been practicing meditation for 23 years now, and this question tells you why. It’s why I do retreats as a student, and it’s why I offer them as a teacher. Each of us, no matter what the circumstances, can find ourselves in a daily struggle to stay sane. And if not completely sane, at least positive. And if not totally positive, than at [...]
The First Noble Misunderstanding
There's a lot of misunderstanding about meditation. In fact, says Karen Maezen Miller, that's pretty much all that meditation is — the process of seeing how very much you've misunderstood about it and everything else. We might be drawn to meditation because we want more out of life and ourselves. We might want to be more centered, for example. More peaceful. More focused. More [...]
The Unhappiness Gap
Happiness is my new pet peeve. Just the idea of it makes me cranky. We're steeped in happy talk. Research and theories, projects and workshops, books and blogs on nothing but happiness and how to find it. Happiness is a new industry. But then, every industry is a happiness industry, and all pursuits are pursuits of happiness. The other day I googled "ways to be happy" and [...]
Maezumi’s Three Teachings
Luckily for me, my teacher Nyogen Roshi keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. (I'm beginning to realize that's what teachers do.) In nearly every one of his weekly dharma talks he ends up reciting a set of instructions given to him by his teacher Maezumi Roshi in the early days of his training. Wisdom teachings are fascinating things. They may not appear to be [...]
Wanting What’s Right
My daughter comes to me after watching TV: "Mom, I know what I want to save my money for. A laptop or a cell phone." She's nine years old, and the money she's talking about is her weekly allowance. As long as I'm her mother, she won't be fulfilling either desire any time soon, but that doesn't resolve the problem for me. I perceive it as something far bigger, more [...]