Random Linkage: Mindfulness Starts Here, Tselm Tulku Tweets, ATS Silent Auction & Southland Dharma

Another jam packed week getting up on a new gig, seeing the impermanence of a stair railing in my home and collecting pug pee for veterinary analysis. Teachings on birth and old age right there.

Here are a few items that crossed my path in the past little bit:

• This week saw the release of ‘Mindfulness Starts Here: An Eight-Week Guide to Skillful Living’ by Lynette Monteiro and Frank Musten (co-founders of the Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic) which I’m excited to check out. With a heavy hitter like Joan Halifax providing the foreward (which you can read here),

Living a rushed, demanding life and wishing for mental calm to deal with the difficulties you face? Stressed out by tangled thoughts and frazzled feelings? Mindfulness Starts Here offers you a way to ease stress with clear instructions on these points: . How mindfulness works using Five Skillful Habits . How being mindful can help you deal better with sadness, pain, and anxiety . How mindfulness can make your life more manageable In Mindfulness Starts Here, you learn how mindfulness works through simple, clear explanations. The instructions and practices show you how to pay attention to your life so you can make skillful decisions. The examples help you understand: . How practicing Five Skillful Habits can change the way you live your life . Why living fully in pleasant and unpleasant times can enrich your life . How mindfulness reduces reactivity to and increases steadiness under stress.

I’m sure there are some excellent nuggets of wisdom being dropped within its pages so if you’re interested, you can find it online via booksellers such as Amazon/ Indigo or ask for your local shop to order it: ISBN 978-1460209349

• I witnessed a dharma talk delivered on Twitter by Tsem Tulku and I thought it was a pretty genius way to present the dharma and then have students or other interested folks offer their questions or feedback. I’m thinking the next step will be to engage in good old fashioned debate via Twitter. Oh wait. Many of us are doing this now.