Category Archives: Whatever

Pain Invading the Mind

Dealing with physical pain — Thanissaro Bhikkhu, also known as Ajahn Geoff.

This Dhamma talk is worth a listen from time to time since pain is many times the world’s most savage enemy that can easily grind you into dust and ruin your life. Remember, life doesn’t care about you. In fact, pretty much everything out there is trying to kill you, so wake up and realize that this is a fight to the death. So, dealing with daily pain takes some skill, which Ajahn Geoff from Thai forest Buddhist tradition talks about all the time. Listen during meditation. Try the technique. It’s all about where you set your awareness. It takes an insane amount of practice. But don’t worry. Since the pain has absolutely no intention of going away you have plenty of time to learn and get it right.

The Buddha’s core instruction on physical pain is pretty brief. The most important part is to keep the pain from invading your mind and letting it take up residence. The goal is not necessarily to eliminate pain but instead to change your relationship with it. That right there is far too much for most people to accept, which, of course, only leads to more pain.

Ajahn Geoff talks about the famous forest teacher Ajahn Lee who offers a practical guide. When pain arises, first focus on the comfortable parts of the body and breathe into those areas. That comfort can grow into a kind of foundation or a place to stand and eventually into a resource to direct your energy through the pain itself. Rather than walling off the pain, you breathe through and punch holes through it.

The next step is to examine the stories and perceptions we build around pain. We tell ourselves the pain has been here for a long time and will continue, and in doing so we drag past and future suffering into the present moment. Dropping the stories can lighten the pain considerably.

You can also question whether the pain is as solid or permanent as it seems. Move your awareness toward the sharpest point of the pain, rather than away from it. Get tough. Go right at it. This can sometimes reveal that the pain shifts and dissolves under close attention. The fact that it moves at all is many times revealing. I’ve noticed this many times. It’s obvious, in fact. I’ve also questioned whether I’m feeling the pain when my attention is directed entirely out of my body to other matters, such as a phone call, a story from a friend, or a TV program.

The larger point is that while pain may arise from causes beyond our control, what the mind does with it is very much under our control. With practice, that distinction can be seen and understood. Remember, everything in Buddhist mediation is based on mind states. You get good at accessing those mind states only with many years of practice. If you don’t practice you suffer the consequences.

That’s just one of Ajahn Geoff’s Dhamma talks. Here are hundreds more. It’s an absolutely amazing archive of Pāli Canon content. I visit daily.

Meditate, Act, Release

There are three skills I use to help clear my mind. They are simple to understand on the surface but difficult to master at depth. So, I practice every day and hope for the best. They all support each other, but each one contains its own character, demands, and rewards. You can do one. You can do two or three or even more if you want to craft your own list. Whatever. I just chose these three since three is easy to remember and practice every day.

So, here’s my little list: meditate, act, release. That’s it.

Meditate

Most people think meditation means relaxing. It doesn’t. It’s training. And there’s nothing relaxing about it. You are teaching your mind to do something it will actively and sometimes violently resist, which is to concentrate on one thing at a time without getting distracted by random thoughts.

Here’s what actually happens when you sit down to meditate. Within seconds your mind starts drifting. You think about something you said yesterday. You think about what to eat for dinner. You think about some problem at work, or something you saw online earlier that annoyed you. You think about thinking. And then you realize you’ve completely forgotten what you were supposed to be concentrating on. So you start again. And then the drift happens again. You start again. And again. That process — the noticing and the returning — is the practice. That’s the whole thing. If you can get that far you are a pro! Most people quit after just a few seconds of meditation.

What you’re building is the ability to hold your attention where you want it to be. That sounds boring and obvious until you realize how rarely you actually do it throughout your day. Most of us run around on autopilot doing bits and pieces of stuff that cross our path. The mind wanders and we follow it, usually into some thought that isn’t immediately useful, isn’t especially interesting, and isn’t even real because it’s either some memory from the past or some worry about the future. Meditation trains you to notice this process and redirect your mind back to the present moment — a mantra, the breath, or whatever you chose to concentrate on. Most people never master the ability to concentrate.

The payoff is not mystical. It’s practical. When your mind is trained to focus, you think more clearly. You waste less mental energy on useless thoughts. And when something genuinely demands your full attention, you can actually give it. That’s a rare skill. And it compounds over time. Remember, you need this skill to achieve anything of value. Focus isn’t optional. And absolutely everything in life attacks your focus. So, meditate and learn how to fight back!

There are many meditation techniques. I use a simple breath awareness method combined with listening to short dharma talks. Others use mantras, body scans, or silently counting. The technique doesn’t matter. What matters is that you sit down and do it every day without fail. Even ten minutes. Even five. Just do it. The consistency is the point and you can grow the duration over time. If you can get up to 30 minutes twice a day you will be a rare person indeed.

Act

The second skill is action. Not big dramatic action. Just the daily discipline of doing the next thing.

The reason action matters so much, especially in the context of the other two skills on this list, is that an undone task is a tax on your mind. It sits there. It takes up space. It returns to you at inconvenient moments, usually when you’re trying to sleep or trying to concentrate on something else. Most people carry around enormous mental loads made up entirely of things they haven’t done yet. And that load gets heavier over time. It can drive you crazy. It’s more obvious when you are meditating, which can be especially infuriating. But at least it’s obvious that the situation needs fixing.

The initial solution is simple. Write stuff down. Make a list. Work the list. It’s a relief just to get stuff out of your head. A task that lives on paper stops living in your head. That alone is worth something. But then you actually have to take some action. And that’s where the skill comes in because doing things requires a kind of momentum that doesn’t come automatically. You have to start. Starting is the hardest part for most people.

If you keep telling yourself you’re going to do something and you never actually do it, at some point it’s not really a plan. It’s avoidance dressed up as planning.

Act. Do something. Make one call. Write the first paragraph. Send the message. Make some notes. Break the problem into pieces and move one piece today and cross that off the list. The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is movement. If brute force is necessary to get started, use it. If anger is necessary, use it.

And here’s what people often miss about movement. It builds on itself. Each small thing you complete right now makes the next thing slightly easier to start. That’s not a metaphor. Action generates a kind of forward energy that inaction never produces no matter how much you think about it. The opposite is also true. Every day you don’t move on something makes it harder to move on it tomorrow. Inaction has momentum too. It just runs in the wrong direction.

The practical implication to this is that it almost doesn’t matter where you start. Pick something. Do it. The momentum will carry you further than you expected, and you’ll find yourself re-arranging things in some order after you get started. A mind that is moving through its problems feels entirely different from a mind that is buried under them. Be as assertive as possible with this. Even aggressive.

Release

Release means letting go. It means accepting that you cannot handle everything, fix everything, understand everything, or even keep up with everything. And especially now, when world events move faster than any reasonable person can track, the pressure to stay on top of it all is constant and completely impossible to satisfy.

The world is loud. It’s full of people and institutions with a strong interest in keeping your attention locked onto things you cannot control and problems you cannot solve. The news cycle is relentless. The crises pile up. All of your friends are melting down. And if you let it, all of the madness will colonize your mind and leave you feeling anxious and exhausted without you having actually done anything useful.

Releasing is not quitting. It’s not indifference. It’s the recognition that your attention is finite and that you have to protect it. You release what you can’t change. You release outcomes you can’t control. You release the need to have an opinion on every single thing that happens in the world. You release old grievances that aren’t serving you. You release the idea that you need to figure everything out before you can move forward.

This takes practice. Letting go is not natural. The mind wants to grab every thought that comes its way. It wants to resolve and conclude and fix but it has no off button. Most things don’t resolve. Some things just have to be lived with, set down, and walked away from. Practice dropping things on the floor. Dump it. Say no.

The good news is that meditation and action both help with this. Meditation trains you to watch thoughts float by without thinking them. And action moves you through problems so they don’t just pile up and fester. Release is the third leg of this little stool that enables you to focus on what you can actually do for yourself.

Summary

None of these three skills has a beginning or an end. They are all ongoing. You don’t master them and move on. You practice them the way musicians practice scales or athletes practice footwork. Every day. Imperfectly. But consistently.

And these skills aren’t really separate. That’s the other thing worth understanding. Meditation makes action easier because a focused mind wastes less energy on doubt and distraction. Action makes release easier because you’re actually moving through problems rather than just stewing in them. Release makes meditation easier because you’re not dragging a pile of unresolved tension into every session. Each one reinforces the others. When one slips, the others feel it. When one gets stronger, the others benefit.

That’s why the list is short. Three things. All connected. Worth doing every day.

Eight Kilograms

I lost 8 kgs these last 12 months. It’s all part of rehab. I’m at weight now so no need to lose more. I didn’t actually try, but I do have the desire to be as light as possible but maintain as much muscle as possible. In fact, I’ll probably gain a kg or two as I build more muscle and bone and more connective tissue. I’m only interested in lean mass now. Whatever fat comes along with that process naturally is fine. I’ve had the exact same diet over the last year, but I’m lifting much more heavily now so that additional work is clearly burning away any excess fat. I’m a lot stronger now in all areas and gaining noticeable muscle — finally. Can swim 4x as long now, and I can finally kick like a normal human being. So, the pool is great.

There were a few setbacks (one very serious) in the last year, but I’ve recovered relatively quickly from all of them. That itself is a surprise. Previously, a crash could set me back for several years so this is clearly a new day. The dead hang, horse stance, squat, planks, lifts, and swims are all coming along very well too. It’s a slow process, and full recovery will ultimately take years. But there is obvious progress now.

Another Miracle on Ice

Nice little moment for hockey fans recently. Forty-six years after the Miracle on Ice, the US men’s hockey team beat Canada 2-1 on February 22nd to win the gold medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy. And it happened on the exact anniversary of that famous 1980 win. That’s interesting. Did they script that? I have to think so. It’s too perfect. I’d certainly book it like that for sure.

But to understand why this gold medal may have hit so differently for American hockey players, you have to know a bit about what came before. The US and Canada have been meeting in the Olympics since 1920. And for most of that history, Canada owned the top position just like they’ve pretty much owned hockey for generations. And even when professional NHL players started competing in the Olympics in 1998, the Canadiens still maintained their superiority. They beat the Americans in the gold medal game in 2002 in Salt Lake City, and then again in 2010 in Vancouver. And last year, Canada knocked the US out again in overtime at the 4 Nations Face-Off. The Americans kept getting close but kept falling short.

Also, for decades there has been a serious rivalry between the Americans and the Canadians in the NHL. Back when I was a kid in New York we were supposed to hate the Canadians, which was odd to me since most players at that time in the NHL were Canadian. And I loved the Montreal Canadiens. They were unreal back then. In fact, the first hockey game I went to in person was to see the Montreal Canadiens. They blew me away. Such speed. Just beautiful. But I lived on Long Island and loved the upstart Islanders, too, so over time they became my team as they went on to win 4 Stanley Cups. I hated the Rangers in NYC and the Flyers in Philadelphia, sure, absolutely. But that’s just competitive sports. I never hated the Canadian teams just because they lived in Canada. If they were playing my team, sure, spill some blood. But that’s temporary. And it’s not the same thing as blindly following some manufactured political conflict.

That’s also why I really rarely watched the Olympics aside from catching clips in the news. When I was a kid the Olympic games seemed boring. I couldn’t wait for that never-ending two weeks to end so I could watch something else on TV. Then over time I realized that the Olympics as an event was too political for me to take seriously. Also, the events within the games didn’t interest me that much as an adult. I really only follow a few sports anyway such as football, hockey, racing, and fighting. Now, I didn’t care much about Olympic athletes being patriotic to their respective countries, that’s fine. I’d probably do the same if I were in that position. So, no objections to all of that. Instead, what bothered me over the years was all the inane commentary in the media by mindless mobs decade after decade pushing one agenda or another. Relax. It’s just sports. But yet again, and right on schedule, the propagandists have tried their very best to wreck things with their constant complaining throughout the Olympics. Why we let idiocy in the commentariat ruin everything I’ll never know. I’m glad to see, though, that the U.S. hockey players basically laughed it off.

Anyway, when Jack Hughes scored at 1:41 into overtime on Sunday, the weight of all those previous American near-misses made the moment feel bigger than normal. This was not just a win. It was the win American hockey players had been waiting decades for. And they got it against the one team that mattered most to them. So, good on the Americans.

But the real story of the game was probably the goalie, Connor Hellebuyck. He stopped an insane 41 of 42 shots, including 27 right from the slot. Canada had every chance to win big, but they couldn’t get anything past Hellebuyck. Hughes put it nicely after the game by saying that Hellebuyck was the best player on the ice by far. He was right. Many times serious athletes praise others on the team because they can easily recognize excellence among their peers. It’s obvious. And they all know how hard it is to achieve those skills.

The US went a perfect 6-0 in the tournament and outscored other teams 26-9. The Americans earned every bit of of their victory. Let Canada cry till the next time and we’ll fight again then. That’s the way it is. It goes both ways. Always has.

Aside from the hockey itself, the most moving moment came after the game. The team brought Johnny Gaudreau’s kids onto the ice during the celebration and honored their friend who was killed in 2024 in a tragic and unbelievably senseless accident. Read about it. My God. The players on the American team carried his memory with them the whole tournament, and that tribute said everything about what this team meant to each other.

Noticing Dreams

The other night I noticed I was having a lot of dreams. I figured it was just because I was getting close to waking up, which is when REM sleep increases. So I started thinking about some stuff I needed to do when I got up. But I was still asleep and clearly in REM, so I just needed to get through these last few dreams and get them out of the way. Then I realized I wasn’t actually experiencing this current string of dreams. Instead, I was outside just looking at them. I was watching them float by like little bubbles containing entire stories. The best part? I felt no desire to jump into any of them. Progress!

Japan Nuclear Protest

Here’s my full set of 161 images from the nuclear protests during the summer of 2011 in Tokyo after the massive earthquake, tsunami, and accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. I went to multiple protests but only shot a couple of them. For these photos I used my old Canon 30D and a 50mm lens and I intentionally got as close to each subject as possible. I like getting close so it’s obvious I’m shooting you and I’m in your space. I’ve never liked the concept of hiding in the woods with a long lens. There were hundreds of thousands of people at these protests and it was hot, sweaty, and intense. B&W seemed fitting given the situation.

Fukushima Nuclear Protest, Tokyo, Japan, Summer 2011
Fukushima Nuclear Protest, Tokyo, Japan, Summer 2011

Fukushima Nuclear Protest, Tokyo, Japan. Summer 2011. Full set of 161 images here.

My Daily Review

Here’s a meditation exercise I occasionally use to help increase my moment-to-moment awareness. It’s also been remarkably helpful in developing my memory and my ability to visualize. It’s easy to describe — before I go to sleep I just review visually all the activities from my day. That’s it. Sounds simple but it’s actually hard to do.

I didn’t craft the technique myself. But I’ve read about it in meditation books and I’ve been practicing it and refining it for years. Sometimes I do the technique sitting in a chair or lying down in bed. But just like other meditation techniques, it’s not necessarily relaxing. It takes some work. And I realized that right away when I first tried it. It was obvious my body and my mind really fought the process so I had to learn to fight back. It took a bit of time but I finally won.

So, here it is. I close my eyes and picture my day from start to finish in my mind’s eye. Sometimes I scroll through the day pretty quickly or plod along slowly. I go forward or backward or skip around and focus on specific chunks of time. I play with it to see what works on any given attempt. I make it clear to my mind that I’m in control and I’m doing it my way. I try to see the day as a video with sound but also I add anything I’ve touched or smelled or tasted along the way. I try to get all of my senses involved and to spot any emotions I felt during each point of the day. I try to not get involved with the images I’m seeing, though. I just keep going without questioning anything. I found out that the insights and patterns come over time from repeatedly observing without judging. And, very important, I don’t worry that the images may not be very clear initially. This takes practice. The movie becomes visually sharper over time. But this is critical — even the slightest intention with a few cloudy images is good enough for me to get going because sometimes that’s all I get. It took me forever to understand that part.

That’s it. That’s the exercise. It can take just a few minutes or I can drag it out as long as I want. I don’t take notes afterwards. I just observe the scenes and let them go. And I fight my body’s desire to make me quit by dismissing the pain from sitting or the constant thoughts trying to tease me away into sleep. Not yet. I have some work to do first. Sleep can wait.

Now, here’s the catch. When I first started this exercise I couldn’t think of very much. I knew I did lots of things during the day, but during my nightly reviews all the details were gone. However, what I discovered was that if I could not remember much at night that meant I was not especially present during the day. So, to overcome this, during the day I tried to just focus on my activities without thinking very much. And by that I mean I tried to cut the extraneous thinking, the things not directly related to whatever activity I was doing. Basically, I just tried to kill the random thoughts. This helped me stay more involved with whatever present moment I was experiencing. And that made the difference. I was surprised at how much more detail I could effortlessly remember at night by just doing that one technique during the day. It’s clear that the day and the night are directly tied to each other. But I also found out that remaining present during the day is harder than it seems. Thinking is highly addictive.

This little exercise can get pretty amusing too. Many times during a review I remember in great detail a walk home, for instance. Turning right here, passing this building, hearing a conversation between two girls in front of me, feeling a motorcycle idling and vibrating to my left, seeing an interesting car drive by on the right, noticing the expressions of various people walking by, etc. Massive detail. And then a moment later the entire scene would just stop cold. Nothing. It’s like I couldn’t move forward in the scene because there was just no data. There was nothing to recall. Now, intellectually, I knew I kept walking in reality because I got to the train station — but I could not remember a single detail at that point. The movie pictures running through my mind just stopped. Initially, I thought I was getting tired and perhaps I was falling asleep. But over time I came to realize that when the movie review stops abruptly at night then that’s the exact point I lost my awareness during the day. At that point I let my mind wander to some crap thought about work or some meaningless experience in the past I’ve thought a million times before. I lost my awareness of the present moment. My body was obviously still walking (thanks to my hindbrain), but my awareness was stupidly roaming around somewhere else (thanks to my prefrontal cortex). And that’s what was blocking my daily reviews.

When I practiced this technique every night I started seeing holes like these during my day — blocks of time where all the details were lost. And those breaks became blatantly clear. But here’s what’s really cool — not only does this phenomenon become clear at night when I reviewed my day, but over time it started to become clear during the day as well. I literally could see in real time the exact point I lost my awareness of the present moment. Sometimes, I’d be walking and then start daydreaming and when I realized it I’d stop and ask myself, “Ok, how the hell did I get here?” Then I’d turn and look behind me to see what I missed and to see if I had a clue how long I was thinking. Sometimes, just to drag the point out, I’d actually walk back to where I was present, look around at the scene, and then start again. It’s really weird how I could always find the exact point where I lost my awareness. “Oh, ok, right here at this street corner next to this grey house I started thinking about my Maine vacation 35 years ago. Got it. Ok, start on my walk again.” That observation was critical. And it was shocking to realize how much I was missing in each moment. Some people, like me, cruise along all day like this without having any experience of being aware of anything in the present moment. Most people live their lives in their imagination. They day dream. So, we get used to rapidly switching between reality and virtual reality. And that’s what passes for normal. It’s not.

So, why am I doing this? Well, over time this technique is helping me remain present during activity and that’s always helpful for getting through my day more efficiently. I can see my progress on real life tasks more clearly when I’m fully present, which helps reduce the feeling of panic when things pile up. It also helps me become aware of the low-value, nonproductive things I do repeatedly every day — and especially the inane thoughts I think day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. I now know why I can recall something from 40 years ago in such detail. It’s because I’ve been thinking about it all day, every day for 40 years! It’s insane how much time and energy I’ve been wasting thinking about things decades ago or things years into some mythical future. That’s why I do this exercise. To become aware of this phenomenon and to become skilled at staying present. It’s just one step to my ultimate goal — to be fully aware during all phases of waking and sleeping. More on sleep later. But that’s where I’m going.

Mindfulness of Death

Audio: Mindfulness of Death | January 05, 2026 | Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
Audio: Mindfulness of Death | June 18, 2021 | Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

I’ve had a few near-death experiences in my life. And they’ve all changed me profoundly. One time I was paralyzed in the hospital while writhing in intractable pain. I thought there was no way I’d survive. I couldn’t move anything, but I could whisper. And I could breathe. I noticed that, too. I thought that was odd. So, I focused on that. Nothing else mattered so what the hell. One: in and out. Two: in and out. Three: in and out. And so on. Nothing else mattered. No memory mattered, good or bad. No one in the world mattered, no matter who. Everything in my life up to that point that I had experienced didn’t matter. Everything was suddenly nothing. The focus that experience forced on me was utterly complete. The breath saved me, though. I still think about that every day even now. In and out.

Death can come to anyone at any time. You need to be ready.

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