Meditation trains the mind the way physical exercise strengthens the body.

In Buddhist teaching, ignorance is considered the fundamental cause of violence - ignorance... about the separation of self and other... about the consequences of our actions.

In our own lives and in our communities, we need to find a way to include others rather than exclude them. We need to find a way to allow our pain and suffering, individually and collectively.

Throughout our lives we long to love ourselves more deeply and to feel connected with others. Instead, we often contract, fear intimacy, and suffer a bewildering sense of separation. We crave love, and yet we are lonely. Our delusion of being separate from one another, of being apart from all that is around us, gives rise to all of this pain.

My ideal registration system would be an opt-out one, where every single person is registered once they turn 18. In Australia, I’m told, everyone is registered to vote and you pay a fine if you don’t vote.

The quality of mindfulness does not just know something is happening - e.g. there is an emotion, a sensation - but knows without clinging or condemning.

Meditation is not the construction of something foreign, it is not an effort to attain and then hold on to a particular experience. We may have a secret desire that through meditation we will accumulate a stockpile of magical experiences, or at least a mystical trophy or two, and then we will be able to proudly display them for others to see.