This page offers a simple way to navigate the large (and growing!) number of articles in the Writings section. The articles are loosely sorted by topic, which will hopefully help you to find the material that's most interesting to you. Alternatively, you can use the search box at the bottom of the page to look for key terms of interest.
Quick links to categories of articles
- For beginners
- Core meditation skills
- Buddhist theory and general practice advice
- Samadhi (concentration)
- Insight, emptiness and other weirdness
- Silent Illumination/shikantaza/Unborn practice
- Koan practice
- Heart-opening practices
- Energy practices
- Gateless Barrier series (commentaries on a classic collection of koans)
- Satipatthana Sutta (The Discourse on Attending with Mindfulness) series
- Anapanasati Sutta (The Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing) series
For beginners
- Why meditate? (the many benefits of meditation practice)
- What is mindfulness? (getting started with this popular style of practice)
- Working mindfully with difficult emotions (using our mindfulness skills to alleviate suffering)
- Opening the heart (nurturing positive emotions)
- Self-inquiry and the power of insight (how to find out who you really are)
- Stability, grounding and authenticity (key qualities that meditation can bring into our lives)
- Being and timelessness (an alternative approach for people whose To Do lists are too long already)
- What's the best way to practise? (tailoring your practice to your needs)
- Mindfulness in daily life (aka 'Do I really need to meditate?')
- Dealing with vexations (practical applications of meditation to real-life situations)
- Awakening the mind, heart and body (different levels on which practice can touch us)
- Befriending the inner critic (how meditation can fortify our mental health)
- Nurturing your practice (more considerations for making your practice your own)
- Cultivating mind, body and heart (four ways meditation can help us to grow)
Core meditation skills
Buddhist theory and general practice advice
- Freedom from suffering (the core promise of Buddhism)
- Beyond oneness (the 'two truths' of relative and absolute)
- Buddha Nature (demystifying a central concept in Mahayana Buddhism)
- The eight worldly winds (navigating the world more gracefully)
- Sudden awakening, gradual cultivation (the theory behind Zen's approach to practice)
- The thought of enlightenment and Hitting the mark (a two-part article on Dogen's advice for Zen practitioners)
- Different approaches to practice (which one is right?)
- Getting off to a flying start (five things to do at the start of a meditation session)
- Sticking the landing (five things to do at the end of a meditation session)
- Shinzan Miyamae Roshi, 1935-2021 (a tribute to my teacher's teacher)
- Groundhog Day (samsara, the cycle of rebirth)
- The Five Hindrances (an early Buddhist teaching on obstacles in meditation)
- Pain and suffering (what's the difference?)
- Living Zen (making practice a part of who you are, not just something you do)
- Three doorways to freedom (the Three Characteristics of early Buddhism)
- Not knowing (thought in meditation practice)
- Context is everything (the many approaches to freedom from suffering found across multiple Buddhist traditions)
- The Triple Gem (Buddhism's three refuges, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and a lame Christmas tie-in)
- The Eightfold Path (the Buddha's first discourse, part 1)
- The Four Noble Truths (the Buddha's first discourse, part 2)
- Does Buddhism teach "no self"? (the Buddha's second discourse, part 1)
- Shedding illusions (the Buddha's second discourse, part 2)
- Basic goodness (seeing the seeds of wisdom and compassion in the nature of life itself)
- Eightfold Path series:
- Right View (how to look at the world if we want to liberate ourselves from suffering)
- Right Intention (three helpful intentions to cultivate along the way)
- Right Speech (how our verbal interactions play into our wider spiritual path)
- Right Action (a contemplation on the Buddhist ethical precepts)
- Right Livelihood (the spiritual path as a way of life)
- Right Effort (avoiding unwholesome states and cultivating wholesome ones)
- Right Mindfulness (what to pay attention to, and why)
- Right Concentration (the relationship of jhana to concentration practice, and some alternatives)
- Overcoming bad habits (reward-based learning in the Pali canon)
Samadhi (concentration)
- Becoming one with everything... and going beyond (Chan master Sheng-Yen's map of samadhi practice)
- The difficult stuff (dealing with difficult psychological material in practice, which is by no means limited to samadhi practice, but samadhi practice can really bring it up)
- Following your nose (the Seven Factors of Awakening as a map of samadhi practice)
- Practising the jhanas (early Buddhism's approach to samadhi practice)
- Stabilising the mind (the Elephant Path, a Mahayana/Vajrayana map of samadhi practice)
- What you seek is within you (why practise samadhi in general, and jhana in particular?)
- Frontiers of consciousness (the higher jhanas, and what we can learn from them)
- Settling the mind (how to tailor your meditation object to help your mind calm down)
Insight, emptiness and other weirdness
- Eating the food, not the menu (why intellectual understanding isn't enough)
- Being-time and nothingness (the first part of the article definitely constitutes 'Zen weirdness')
- There is no spoon (introduction to emptiness)
- The dance of life (a guided contemplation on the nature of reality)
- The fabricated world (more on emptiness and the nature of perception)
- Socrates, the first Zen teacher (parallels between the Socratic method and Zen inquiry)
- Insight (includes an experiment for you to try at home!)
- Deconstructing sensory experience (how vipassana works)
- Developing insight (different approaches to insight practice)
- A mind like space (a curious meditation practice from early Buddhism)
- Three doorways to freedom (the Three Characteristics of early Buddhism)
- Pointing out the way (experiments to reveal your true nature)
- Contemplating reality (contemplation practice, an alternative to insight meditation, and the Five Daily Reflections)
- Dependent origination: a beginner's guide (seeing the world as processes rather than entities)
Silent Illumination/shikantaza/Unborn practice
- Unnecessary(?) words (some ways of understanding this mysterious, profound practice)
- Silent Illumination (going back to the source, and more ways to approach the practice)
- The Method of No-Method (Chan master Sheng-Yen's map of Silent Illumination)
- Constriction and relaxation (using early Buddhist concepts to find the right mental attitude for Silent Illumination)
- Unstained silk (Zen master Keizan's advice on how to practise)
- Inner silence (how turning toward 'nothing' can lead us to ourselves)
- Learning to let go (Takuan Soho on the correct attitude for Silent Illumination practice)
Koan practice
- Being-time and nothingness (Dogen's view of time, including a discussion of koan practice)
- Asking the big questions (how koan practice unfolds over time)
- Where are your thoughts? (how to work with 'non-literal' instructions)
Heart-opening practices
- (Mis-)understanding the Brahmaviharas (the Brahmaviharas and their near enemies)
- Debugging your heart (using the Three Flows of Compassion to understand and work with difficulties in heart-opening practice, with a focus on loving kindness)
- Compassion without borders (working with difficult people to make our heart-opening practices truly boundless, with a focus on compassion)
- Rejoicing in another's good fortune (the benefits of heart-opening practice, and another way to explore boundlessness, with a focus on mudita, 'sympathetic joy')
- Unshakeable peace (the practice of equanimity, and how it binds the other Brahmaviharas together, counterbalancing their tendency to drift into their near enemies)
- Unlocking metta (how to get into loving kindness practice if it doesn't grab you straight away)
- Why 'Brahmaviharas'? (the origins of early Buddhist heart-opening practices, and compassion in early Buddhism)
- In heaven's river (the hidden gem of the Brahmaviharas, and some poems from the mountain monk Enku)
- Equanimity is the heart of the Brahmaviharas (how equanimity enriches our emotional life, and how the seemingly 'imaginary' practices of Brahmavihara lead to tangible real-world effects)
- Lightening the load (forgiveness as a practice)
Energy practices
- Hakuin's wings (energy practices in Rinzai Zen)
- A stable foundation (a step-by-step approach to cultivating energy)
- Time to recharge (the importance of relaxing and building a foundation for energy practices)
- Finding harmony (circulating energy with the microcosmic orbit)
Gateless Barrier series (commentaries on a classic collection of koans)
- Case 1: Zhaozhou's Dog (does a dog have Buddha Nature?)
- Case 2: A Wild Fox (a cautionary tale!)
- Case 3: One Finger (the importance of authenticity)
- Case 4: The Foreigner has no Whiskers (the many roads to the Great Way)
- Case 5: Up in a Tree (how what we hold on to limits who we are)
- Case 6: Buddha Picks Up a Flower (the Flower Sermon, emptiness and the inner critic)
- Case 7: Wash Your Bowl (Beginner's Mind, cognitive science and cultivating mental flexibility)
- Case 8: The Wheelmaker (deconstructing the stories we tell ourselves using the Four Elements)
- Case 9: The Buddha Capable of Great Penetrating Knowledge (the value of sitting still, and how insight arises)
- Case 10: Alone and Poor (what it means to live a life of non-self)
- Case 11: Testing Hermits (meeting people where they are, and how knowledge matures into wisdom over time)
- Case 12: Calling the Master (the power of habits and intention-setting, and internalising Socrates to overcome self-deception)
- Case 13: Deshan Carrying His Bowl (how we each find our own meaning in koans)
- Case 14: Killing a Cat (the importance of personal experience, and the perils of the thicket of views)
- Case 15: Threescore Blows (Great Doubt, and its unhelpful sibling, sceptical doubt)
- Case 16: Putting on a Formal Vestment at the Sound of a Bell (questioning our intention, seeing the emptiness of structure and what it means to find freedom)
- Case 17: The National Teacher's Three Calls (cultivating equanimity in the face of irritation)
- Case 18: Three Pounds (naturalness and spontaneity in Zen, and how we get there)
- Case 19: The Normal is the Way (Zen and the flow state)
- Case 20: People of Great Power (our topsy-turvy view of our experience, and how we can embody Zen in our lives)
- Case 21: A Dry Turd (Zen is found even in the most mundane, not just in 'enlightenment experiences')
- Case 22: Kashyapa's Flagpole (Zen transmission)
- Case 23: Not Thinking of Good or Evil (the story of Huineng, the Sixth Ancestral Master or Sixth Ancestor of Zen)
- Case 24: Detachment from Words (expressing the inexpressible, and the stages of koan practice)
- Case 25: Sermon from the Third Seat (dreaming and waking)
- Case 26: Two Monks Roll Up a Screen (what is gain? what is loss?)
- Case 27: It Is Not Mind or Buddha (spiritual materialism and letting go)
- Case 28: Long Have I Heard (cultivating non-reactivity through Silent Illumination)
- Case 29: Not the Wind, Not the Banner (what is 'the mind' in Zen?)
- Case 30: The Very Mind Itself is Buddha (Buddhist and scientific models of mind)
- Case 31: Zhaozhou Investigates a Woman (walking your own Zen path)
- Case 32: An Outsider Questions Buddha (what are you holding on to?)
- Case 33: Not Mind, Not Buddha (a sequel to case 30, and a Zen fractal)
- Case 34: Knowledge is Not The Way (grounding, gut instinct, and how to avoid headaches in practice)
- Case 35: A Woman's Split Soul (what is your true nature, behind your many masks?)
- Case 36: Meeting Adepts on the Road (stillness, motion and intimacy with life)
- Case 37: The Cypress Tree in the Garden (rediscovering freshness in our experience)
- Case 38: The Ox Passing Through the Window Screen (the back-to-front-ness of ordinary experience)
- Case 39: Trapped in Words (various ways we can get caught, and why it isn't always a bad thing)
- Case 40: Kicking Over a Water Pitcher (integrating emptiness into daily life)
- Case 41: Pacifying the Mind (what, and where, is mind?)
- Case 42: A Woman Comes Out of Absorption (Silent Illumination and meditative experiences)
- Case 43: A Bamboo Stick (impossible choices and other Zen paradoxes)
- Case 44: A Staff (formlessness to form to formlessness - the process of learning and integration)
- Case 45: Who Is That? (finding and inhabiting the space between thoughts)
- Case 46: Stepping Forward Atop a Pole (moving beyond various apparent 'end points' in practice)
- Case 47: Three Barriers (common obstacles along the Zen path)
- Case 48: One Road (the secret of all Buddhas everywhere!)
Satipatthana Sutta (The Discourse on Attending with Mindfulness) series
- Part 1: Introduction to the Satipatthana Sutta; 1st satipatthana (mindfulness of body): breathing, postures and activities
- Part 2: Mindfulness of body continued: parts of the body, body scan
- Part 3: Mindfulness of body continued: the Four Elements (sometimes called Four Great Elements)
- Part 4: End of mindfulness of body: charnel ground contemplations; 2nd satipatthana (mindfulness of vedana)
- Part 5: 3rd satipatthana (mindfulness of mind states), start of 4th satipatthana (mindfulness of phenomena): Five Hindrances, Five Aggregates
- Part 6: End of mindfulness of phenomena: Six Sense Spheres, Ten Fetters, Seven Awakening Factors, Four Noble Truths, encouragement to practice, end of the Satipatthana Sutta.
Anapanasati Sutta (The Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing) series
- Part 1: Introduction, preliminaries and first tetrad (steps 1-4, mindfulness of the body)
- Part 2: Second tetrad (steps 5-8, mindfulness of vedana and mental activity)
- Part 3: Third tetrad (steps 9-12, mindfulness of the mind)
- Part 4: Fourth tetrad (steps 13-16, mindfulness of dhammas and insight practice)
- Part 5: Complete instructions and suggestions for working with Anapanasati