How can we bring the benefits of meditation to the rest of our life? That’s what I’m setting out to explore - and maybe help you, on your journey, too.

Let’s face it, some days are pretty awful. Maybe it’s something dramatic - you are laid off at work, or someone near to you is diagnosed with something really bad, or you return to your car to find a huge scrape all the way along one side and no note of apology under the windscreen wiper. Maybe it’s something that might appear trivial to others - you tread on an errant piece of Lego and spill your cup of tea on your clean clothes.

We all have to do difficult things, but we shouldn’t just do them for the hoped-for outcome. We can chose to do them mindfully, regardless of outcome.

Equanimity for Buddhists is one of the four highest emotions, one of the states we aspire to live in and live by. We see it as the ground for wisdom, the protector of compassion and love, and as full of radiance and warmth for others. It’s a quality we can consciously cultivate through meditation.

The cycle of getting distracted and then returning to what we should have been attending to is ever-present in our lives. Part of meditation is training to shorten this loop.

I love optical illusions. This particular one shows our brain trying to make sense of perspective - the two horizontal boxes are the same width, but the top one looks wider than the bottom one because of what look like the “railway lines” behind them. There are lots of theories about what’s going on in our brains when we see things like this. But what we know for sure, is that our brain is telling us something about the world that isn’t true.

Buddhists talk about Doubt as one of the “five hindrances”. It’s important to distinguish between two different ways we use the English word doubt. The first is helpful: it’s about inquiry, investigation, and examination. We shouldn’t automatically believe or disbelieve things we hear, we should be curious - that kind of doubt is helpful. That’s what the robin in today’s photo is doing: he is just thinking “is there anything I can eat here?

These are the difficult times. When we can make a difference, to ourselves and others, by what we do in the moment.

Every day, we start the day with a certain set of expectations, and our own set of strengths and weaknesses to bring to bear on them. Some days seem to work out ok, while others just seem to run off track, despite our best intentions.