Blog | Second Arrow

Jun 30, 202414 min read

Silent retreat: what you need to know

My first silent retreat was challenging, and yet I have gone back for more again and again. Try your first silent retreat, and perhaps you w

May 31, 20245 min read

Before I became a parent, I was pretty mindful. I meditated each morning for as long as I wanted, and I maintained my practice throughout...

Dec 30, 20235 min read

I was practising in a very goal-focussed way for a while, aiming for kensho, which is the breakthrough experience of Zen, in which the...

Dec 11, 20234 min read

Most people who are interested in mindfulness know that it comes from Buddhism. Fewer know, however, how far the modern, popular...

Sep 30, 20237 min read

In my last post, I made a rather speculative case for body awareness as a natural state, to which we should all wish to return. In this...

Aug 10, 20235 min read

Cmichel67 (Christopher Michel), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons First, let me say...

Mar 5, 20236 min read

So, you’ve learned how to meditate. Great. But now you face the big challenge of actually getting yourself to do it. Here are some tips...

Mar 5, 20234 min read

What is mindfulness? There’s a lot that could be said about mindfulness, but let's start by saying that it means not being tangled up...

Mar 5, 20235 min read

I've written already about what mindfulness is, and how meditation strengthens it, but why should you want it? If mindfulness is one of...