A particularly difficult human challenge involves trying to balance a desire to be there for others – both those in our personal lives and in our society in general – and a desire to offer ourselves our own self-care. When these two needs are unbalanced, we and others tend to suffer because of it, largely based on the degree of the imbalance. Gratefully, the Buddha offered us many ways that we could address these competing needs through our mindfulness meditation practice, and develop a sense of peace and ease for both self, and others. This talk explores some of his most important teachings on this topic. It includes a meditation at the end.

The Buddha was once asked "what is the most important thing for us to practice?" He answered: patience (or khanti, in Pali) and assured us that this skill or quality is something we can learn to apply to absolutely everything we struggle with in our lives - every person, situation, and even ourselves - in order to become much more peaceful, self-controlled, compassionate, and undisturbed by life itself. This talk explores his teachings about how we can do this. It includes a meditation at the end.

We all tend to seek out and hope for gain, status, praise, and pleasure, and resist or fear loss, disgrace, blame, and pain – even though all are inescapable, and visit each of us in different forms throughout our lives. And how we relate to these hopes and fears – often called the 8 Worldly Winds – often dictates how we experience our entire world. This talk explores how our meditation practice can help us to pay closer attention to these various winds so that we can learn how to better allow them to rise and pass without clinging so tightly to them, and therefore, discover more freedom and ease in our lives. It includes a meditation at the end.

Often during our meditation practice, we encounter a state known as “busy mind,” which is when there’s a kind of ongoing flow of anxious or repetitive mental chatter that tends to keep us locked in the realm of the past or the future, and therefore, mostly distracted from the reality of the present moment, or … the life we’re actually living. This talk explores how this particular mind state is created, and how we can use our mediation practice to mindfully observe and slow down the flow of thoughts, and in turn calm both the mind and body. It includes a meditation at the end.  

During difficult times, allowing ourselves to pause, breathe, and come back home to the present moment is exactly how we can regain our footing, become more grounded, and shore up our ability to more wisely respond instead of automatically react to whatever’s happening. This talk offers us a variety of ways that our meditation practice can help us learn to rest our attention in awareness itself, and discover more calm, compassion, and wisdom in the face of our challenges. It includes a brief meditation at the end.

An essential aspect of our meditation practice involves training ourselves to very consciously and compassionately navigate the truth of constant change, instead of allowing ourselves to become so unconsciously distracted by the swirl of it that we end up missing out on the life we’re actually living. This talk explores how we can use our mindfulness practice to discover more kindness, presence, and a sense of safety - especially during the more major periods of change and grief in our lives. It includes a 10-minute meditation at the end.

Instead of resisting, denying, or trying to ignore a big change in our lives or in our world, the Buddhist teachings invite us to open up to it and deeply acknowledge: “This Is It,” and then ask ourselves: “now what?” Meaning, what’s the wisest, most compassionate response to this change? How can I relate in a way that is going to open my heart, rather than shut it down? This talk explores how we can use our mindfulness practice to help us remain calm in the midst of chaos, and discover the most beneficial answers.

Our common experience of doubt – in ourselves, and in our ability to make good decisions for ourselves, especially - is actually the very last thing the Buddha himself struggled with just before he became enlightened. In fact, his own awakening was his profound message to us: that we all have the innate capability to discover for ourselves what will lead us towards more happiness, and what will lead us towards more suffering. This talk explores how we can use our healthy doubt as the antidote to our unhealthy doubt in order to reveal what is true.

Whenever we experience pain or suffering, our common tendency is to believe that not only is the cause of our suffering in some way wrong, but that our own response to it is also wrong. And therefore, we tend to surmise that we, ourselves, are also somehow wrong. Happily, the Buddhist teachings are designed to help us notice this common pattern, and learn how we can bravely open up to our own suffering and really get to know it – very intimately – so that we can become wiser and more compassionate, and eventually, become free of it. This new talk from Shell explores how we can better allow ourselves our own feelings through the lens of a half-a-dozen different teaching phrases. It includes a meditation at the end.

The Buddha insisted that our relationships make up the “whole” of our spiritual life, and and urged us to use our mindfulness practice to become more aware of who we’re choosing to associate with in order to assure our sense of peace and well-being. Happily, his teachings offer us numerous ways that we can use our meditation practice to better discern whether our relationships are offering us poison (or, something that makes us feel bad), or medicine. This talk explores how we can tap into our wise bodies and hearts to help us make these important decisions. It includes a meditation at the end.