The Secret to Ending Your Suffering

a post by Matt Hattersley for the Tiny Buddha blog


“You can have your experience without your experience having you.” ~Linda Pransky

You’re no doubt aware that your moods can fluctuate from day to day, even moment to moment. I think most people can appreciate, when they really consider it, that their state of mind is a big variable in their experience of life. What they don’t always see is that their state of mind is responsible for 100 percent of their experience.

The problem is, it’s often hard to remember this or feel consoled by this when you’re stuck, living in your head, feeling bad.

When you’re stuck in anxious, insecure thinking it can often seem like this way of being is here to stay. It can also seem like the bad feeling is caused by a variety of external things: our partners, our bank balance, what’s happening in the world, or indeed hundreds of other possible situations that all get the blame.

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How the mindful brain copes with rejection

a post by Alexandra Martelli and David Chester (Virginia Commonwealth University) published on the OUP blog

Person on mountain by Milan Popovic. CC0 viaUnsplash.

Whether it’s being left out of happy hour plans or being broken up with by a significant other, we can all relate to the pain of social rejection. Such “social pain” is consequential, undermining our physical and mental health. But how can we effectively cope with the distressing experience of being left out or ignored? Mindfulness may be an answer.

Mindfulness can be described as being “in the moment”—a tendency to direct our attention and awareness to our currently-felt internal and external sensations. Mindfulness couples such a focus on the present with an accepting, non-judgmental lens of these feelings. Instead of racing from one errand to the next, thinking only of how to complete the next task, mindful individuals stay focused on the here-and-now. They allow feelings like the stress of getting everything done to wax and wane, without interpreting them as “good” or “bad.”

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Whatever Is Taken for Granted Will Eventually Be Taken Away

a post by Mai Pham for the Tiny Buddha blog


“They say ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.’ The truth is, you knew exactly what you had. You just didn’t think that you were going to lose it.” ~Unknown

She was a mother of eight children. She lived with her family in a small village in the countryside.

Living in a poor family, with eight mouths to feed, she worked every possible job from dawn till dusk, from working in her family’s own rice field to accepting gigs from anyone who’d hire her.

Many people told her not to put her children in school so she could have some help with work. But she insisted on letting her children be educated so that they could have a shot to live a better life than hers. It meant working ten times extra, but she did it anyway.

She lived more strictly than a monk. She didn’t eat enough, because the less she ate, the more her children could eat.

Fast forward nearly forty years later, she suffered from heart disease, blood pressure problem, and many serious illnesses. According to the doctor, the main reason was that she’d neglected herself for so long.

In the last couple months of her life, she couldn't walk or talk. She became paralyzed and she forgot her children and grandchildren. Later she died in the arms of her family.

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