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"There are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground." - Rumi
There are many ways to create more peace in our own lives and in the world.
One Small Stone's blog is divided into 6 categories for you to use:
1. Food for thought to spark ideas.
2. Make some ripples for climate justice.
3. Guided meditations to help you practice. (Some meditations are only accessible to subscribers to the online meditations.)
4. Moon Newsletters in case you haven't subscribed yet.
5. Mamaroneck Living articles to share the printed word.
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Frequency not Scale
Reclaiming our attention is a radical act that lets us control our own time and our connections. Our time and our connections determine the quality of our lives.
Not to be dramatic, but...
The 3 Root Poisons cause our suffering. We filter everything in our lives through one of three lenses: attachment, aversion, and ignorance. We can practice meditation as a way to see these root poisons - and then gently clean the lenses - so that we can see a little more clearly and suffer less.
Lightening Our Load
A good boundary protects our peace and allow us to remain in alignment with our values. This is easier said than done, especially if we've spent years developing defense mechanisms that rest in anger, detachment, or people pleasing. The Loving-Kindness meditation can help us put down our unhelpful defense mechanisms so that we can create healthy boundaries.
2 Meditations: Gently Carving New Pathways, New Ways of Being
People (myself included) usually come to meditation because they want to feel different, better. Often, the expectation is that the experience of meditation - the actual time spent sitting on the cushion meditation - can provide that better feeling. Sometimes it does! Sometimes we get an "aha" insight or we feel deeply relaxed. And, that is awesome! Other times, we have "monkey mind." We spend the entire practice trying to corral our busy thoughts. This is also awesome! It mi
Spring: You Spin My Head Right ‘Round, Right ‘Round
On Spring, “Speedy-Busyness,” and Finding Ourselves Anyone else have the feeling of being a little all over the place this spring? Buddhism has a very descriptive term for this energy of running around, doing a thousand things at once: “speedy-busyness.” I picture Looney Tune Tasmanian Devil energy. 🌪 It’s a little dizzying. The sense of being a spinning top - or maybe a drifting dandelion seed in spring - often feels even more acute at this time of year as the world blooms
Mindfulness of Emotions for Spring
A quick, powerful meditation for processing emotions.
A Zen Koan from Leonard Cohen
A Zen Koan: "Only one thing made him happy. When it was gone, everything made him happy." - Leonard Cohen
Good or Bad Luck? Who Knows. (Two Meditations)
Meditation trains us to come back to reality as it is. During practice, we notice the stories and assumptions that we layer on top of what is actually happening. As we meditate, we build the habit of recognizing thoughts as thoughts, letting them go, and coming back to reality as it is in this moment. We do this because it is nice to be with reality directly. And, also, because we increase our own suffering with our assumptions and fixed ideas. As the story of "Good or Bad Lu
Sympathetic Joy Meditation
Sympathetic Joy, or taking delight in other's happiness, is one of the four Brahmaviharas along with compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity. All four require a psychological expansion of self. Sympathetic Joy is said to be the hardest to practice -- maybe because of our natural negativity bias, maybe because of a scarcity mindset. But, when we practice it, we get to experience more joy! And, the practice of sympathetic joy also feeds into the other Brahmaviharas, increas
2 Meditations: Widening Our Frame
Both of these meditations incorporate James A. Pearson's poem, "Meanwhile," which landed like a gift in my inbox at a particular time in my life. It was a time when something so big was happening in my own life that, at first, I didn't understand how the world kept obliviously spinning. Have you ever had that feeling? Maybe with a birth, a death, some big life event -- your world is forever changed and you can't believe that everyone else doesn't also recognize the enormous
2 Meditations on "Nice vs. Kind" & Buddhism's 3 Gates
For more of a written explanation, please see here.
Shrinking Violets, Tall Sunflowers & an Old Buddhist Teaching
An old Buddhist teaching says that speech should pass through 3 gates before it leaves our mouths: Is it true? Is it necessary ? Is it kind ? I have started seeing these questions as a sort of Rorschach test. 👉 Which appears: a shrinking violet or a tall sunflower? Here’s what I mean: The questions can be cautionary. Careful not to hurt anyone's feelings! Don’t speak when you’re not sure. Or, they can encourage us to speak up when truth, need, and kindness align. Be an up
An Invitation to Equanimity, Buddhist Style
"You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." - Jon Kabat-Zinn Thank you for being here! Today is a New Moon, punctuating the start of a fresh cycle – during what feels to me like an interminable season of uncertainty and fear. Maybe, like me, you find comfort in the moon cycle's reliable invitation to look up, to look out beyond ourselves, and into the broader rhythm of life. In that spirit, please enjoy this invitation to Buddhist equanimity: 💭 Imagine 4 people
Women's History Month Meditations: "When Sleeping Women Wake, Mountains Move."
In honor of Women's History Month, I wanted to pass on this proverb. Kathy Casey shared it with me. I think there is something lovely about the chain. Feel free to also share it. "When sleeping women wake, mountains move." - Chinese Proverb Meditation is a practice of waking up, of seeing reality clearly without the interface of our identities, our opinions, our fixed ideas. As we wake up, mountains move. Please enjoy this 17-minute meditation recorded Friday morning (3/13)
Observing (Not Identifying As) Our Thoughts
These meditation practices are designed to help us become an observer of our thoughts, rather than identifying AS our thoughts. Both practices use the technique of labeling our thoughts as "thinking" and then returning back to the breath. In this 16.5-minute practice , go to 1:38 to skip the intro and get right into the practice. In this 24-minute practice , go to 2:00 to skip the intro and get right to the meditation.
Meditation for Communication
These two (2) Mindfulness of Emotions practices can help us be better listeners. By building self-awareness, we can better understand the "baggage" and perspectives that we're bringing into a conversation. This self-awareness can help us be better at listening to understand, rather than listening to soothe our own ego or justify our own POV. Both meditations use the RAIN (recognize, allow, investigate, nurture/non-identify) framework. 16-minute Mindfulness of Emotion Go to 1
Releasing Old Thought Patterns: a Mindfulness Meditation
Meditation instruction is so simple to say: notice when your mind wanders and come back. Meditation is can also be tricky to practice. Sometimes the place our mind wanders is very alluring. Maybe something big (positive or negative) is happening in our lives. Or, maybe, the place our mind wanders is just very familiar - and in its familiarity, it may be a very comfortable place to hang out. In fact, they might even seem part of our identity, so that to let them go would be to
Mindfulness Meditation (a good place to start)
A Shamatha (or peaceful abiding) meditation. Go to 2:11 to skip the intro and get right into the practice.
Two Meditations Honoring MLK Jr.
MEDITATION 1 FROM FRIDAY, 1/16/26 “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." - Martin Luther King, Jr, from a Letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail, April 16, 1963 The idea of mutuality is inline with the Buddhist concept of interdependence -- that we are not as separate as we think we are. In fact, we are all deeply connected. Because we are "tied in a single garment of de
New Moon, MLK & a "Beginner's Mind" Meditation
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." - Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Psychologists who study the climate change movement – and social justice broadly – think that one reason we don’t do more to make things better is that we, as humans, are incredibly uncomfortable with uncertainty. We’d rather “know” that things are going to be bad, than be unsure that they could be good. A little crazy, right? And, I can also see it. Uncert
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