Remember to catch me on twitter @lewrichmond! We all know that they way we grow old today is not the way it was in former generations. Pre-industrial societies of the past as well as traditional societies of today all had a much more integrated sense of the role of the elderly in the community and [...]
Archive for the ‘Aging and Spirituality’ Category
Growing Old the Old Way
Posted in Aging and Spirituality, tagged Aging and Spirituality, Aging Parents, baby boomers on October 5, 2010 | 10 Comments »
Mindfulness of Aging Part 3
Posted in Aging and Buddhism, Aging and Meditation, Aging and Spirituality, Baby Boomers and Aging, tagged Aging and Buddhism, Aging and Meditation, Aging and Spirituality, mindfulness, Mindfulness of Aging on June 20, 2009 | 15 Comments »
I often say, paraphrasing my own teacher, that the purpose of Buddhist meditation is not to be calm, but to be real. Being real doesn’t exclude being calm, if that is what is happening. But being real is not some particular state of mind; it is the mind in accord with the actuality of things—“real [...]
Mindfulness of Aging Part 2
Posted in Aging and Buddhism, Aging and Meditation, Aging and Spirituality, tagged Aging and Meditation, Aging and Spirituality, aging and zen on June 10, 2009 | 20 Comments »
So what do we do with our aging thoughts? How can we transform them from exercises in comparison and regret into more wholesome insights that nourish us? (If you are tuning in to this blog for the first time, read the last post, “Mindfulness of Aging part I”.) There are three parts to transforming mindfulness: [...]
Mindfulness of Aging Part I
Posted in Aging and Buddhism, Aging and Meditation, Aging and Spirituality, tagged Aging and Buddhism, Aging and Meditation, Aging and Spirituality, Mindfulness of Aging, training the mind on May 28, 2009 | 14 Comments »
In this post I’d like to explore the practice of “Mindfulness of Aging.” Mindfulness is one of the basic practices in Buddhism, but the precise reasons why it is effective (particularly in chronic pain management) are not yet well understood. Mindfulness is sometimes characterized in Buddhist texts as “bare noting,” and is often coupled with [...]
The Candle Flame Burns Just as Brightly
Posted in Aging and Meditation, Aging and Spirituality, tagged aging and beauty, aging and happiness, aging and worry on May 17, 2009 | 10 Comments »
A woman in her fifties recently told me about a dream she had had. In the dream she was at a party and saw a tall, attractive man in his early thirties standing alone with a drink in his hand. The woman went over to talk to the man; in the dream she was young [...]
What is a Spiritual Practice?
Posted in Aging and Spirituality, spiritual practice, tagged Aging and Spirituality, Aging and Yoga, Lewis Richmond, Work as a Spiritual Practice on March 13, 2009 | 8 Comments »
I’ve put the phrase “Spiritual Practice” in my blog title, but it may not be clear to many readers what that means. A spiritual practice is something you do with the body, with speech or with thought that evokes or develops the spiritual in us. The most common spiritual practice in the West is prayer. [...]
Gratitude is This Moment
Posted in Aging and Spirituality, Gratitude, tagged aging and gratitude, suzuki roshi, vertical time, zen and gratitude on March 3, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Gratitude is this moment. Or as my Buddhist teacher Shunyu Suzuki liked to say, “That you are here is the ultimate fact.” But wait. What do we mean, Gratitude is this moment? We might more naturally want to say something like, “Gratitude is to appreciate this moment.” But somehow when I started writing this post, [...]
Books
Aging As A Spiritual Practice
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Books a Million
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Work As A Spiritual Practice
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Healing Lazarus
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A Whole Life's Work
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