Two days ago I got up from the couch and had a pain in my foot that I couldn’t explain. No basketball injury. No assault. No random obstacle I accidentally tripped over. I just got up to get a glass of water. Now I’m walking with crutches.

I haven’t been to the doctor yet, but I’m sure it’s some kind of tear in my plantar fascia.

I’m reminded of The Five Daily Remembrances taught by the Buddha.

I say them like this:

1. We all will grow old.

2. We all will have ill health.

3. We all will die.

4. There’s nothing we can do to keep what we love from separating from us.

5. The only thing that we truly own is our actions.

The Buddha was always teaching about non-attachment to stuff. So much so, he required his Bhikkhu disciples to shave their hair, eat one meal a day and give up sex, owning anything, having a home and eating more than once a day. Extreme much.

(side note: he was known as the least strict spiritual teacher of his day - lol)

So it’s important to take note whenever he talks to lay practitioners - cause you know… a brother’s gotta eat. On this day, he was talking to a king that was aging and worrying about what would happen with his kingdom, here’s a paraphrase of how it went down.

He said:
Imagine four massive mountains were closing in on you and all you love. They are coming toward your kingdom from all directions. They are headed for your people, your family, your homes, your food and you.

Not armies, not hills. Mountains.

Mountains so big nothing could stop them.

They’re crushing villages, people, animals and all. Everything in their path.

No army can hold them back. No money can bribe them. No bombs. No pleading, no democracy, no strategy works—nothing will stop them.

What would you do? He asked.

The king said - in essence,

There wouldn’t be much to do except live well.

Live in peace. Live well. Be good to those around me.

And enjoy what’s left.

The Buddha replied,

Those mountains are already coming.

They are:

Aging.

Illness.

Death.

And losing everything we love.

They’re closing in on all of us.

Kings included.

Sit with that for a second.

There is nothing we can do to hold off these mountains.

I think the point of the story and these great remembrances is that anxiety is here, yes. Danger is here, yes. Hard times are coming, yes. But what we have left is what we have left.

Enjoy it.

Why waste time trying to hold onto my youth? Why waste time arguing with those that don’t want me? Why continue to grieve a love that is lost? Why waste time quivering about the pain in my foot, and grieving the foot I used to have?

Care for the pain. Heal to the health that is still possible. Love this body. This Foot. This life. This middle-aged madman. These two kids. This three-story house. This small circle of friends and family.

If my only possessions are my actions, I want to own treasures of love, kindness, bravery in the face of oppression, stillness in the face of hustle and recovery in the face of addiction.

I’ll stand ten toes on that dharma.

PS. I was writing this post, when my sons challenged me to make an animation in three hours. Just as I was about to tell them to ‘scram,’ I thought I’d take the opportunity to make the Pixar-worthy animation above, telling of the story.

PS-PS.
For those that find themselves alone on Valentines Day, I just released a song about the joy and pain of being home by yourself, for yourself, with yourself, to yourself.

Listen to "By Myself" on Apple Music

Listen to "By Myself" on Spotify

It’s a lovely thing to find relaxation in meditation. When I began practicing, that was the only thing I thought meditation was for. That’s what the apps sold me: peace, calm, serenity and good vibes. In some ways, that worked.

My practice changed the way I related to my body and my mind in profound ways.

But it didn’t change the way I related to my world and the suffering I felt until my practice met the Dharma.

I’ve come to know the meaning of Dharma as “the natural way things unfold.” But is most commonly known as the teachings of Gautama, the enlightened one - AKA the Buddha.

Before meeting the Dharma for myself, it was like trying to grow flowers without dirt.

This is a common move in the West: to teach Buddhist outcomes without naming Buddhist teachings. The wisdom is still there, but the lineage is scrubbed clean.

Some of the most influential breakthroughs in modern mental health come directly from these teachings. You’d never know it, though.

The serial numbers have all been scratched off.

Here are a few thinly veiled and widely used Buddhist practices:

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Introduced meditation into clinical medicine by translating contemplative practices into a secular therapeutic framework focused on stress, pain, and illness.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) by Richard Schwartz
Works with inner “parts” and a calm, centered Self that relates to them without judgment or force.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) by Steven C. Hayes
Teaches people to notice thoughts without obeying them and to live from values rather than avoidance.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) by Marsha Linehan
Builds emotional regulation by holding opposing truths at the same time.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) by Peter Levine
Resolves trauma by tracking sensation in the body rather than reliving the story.

Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) by Paul Gilbert
Treats shame and self-attack by cultivating internal safety and warmth.

Hakomi Method by Ron Kurtz
Uses gentle inquiry into present experience to surface core beliefs and organizing patterns.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy by Pat Ogden
Integrates body awareness with talk therapy to work with trauma stored in movement and posture.

Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) by Peter Fonagy & Anthony Bateman
Strengthens the ability to observe one’s own mind and the minds of others without collapsing into certainty or reactivity.

Non-Pathologizing / Strength-Based Models by multiple clinicians and traditions
Frame symptoms as adaptive responses rather than defects to be eliminated.

To be fair, this wasn’t a con. It was a strategy. Jon Kabat-Zinn has been open about the fact that he translated the practice on purpose, so it could survive in hospitals, universities, and ordinary American life without getting dismissed as “flaky.”

And in his own writing, he also names the source plainly: MBSR was developed as “one of a possibly infinite number of skillful means for bringing the dharma into mainstream settings.”

That move opened the door for millions. But it also created a western environment where people can receive half the Buddhist outcomes while never meeting the whole Buddhist Dharma.

In the western world we like to create shortcuts to peace. But, beware of shortcuts to peace.

_/|\_


Today, my practice looks a bit different. It still offers a great deal of peace and calm, but not the way it once did.

It feels more like that scene in the Christian Bale version of Batman Begins, where he trains to become some kind of samurai in the League of Shadows—then he goes back to Gotham, still as Bruce Wayne and meets his deepest fear. He descends into that dark cave, surrounded by thousands of bats, engulfed by the very thing that once paralyzed him with fear. He doesn’t fight them. He doesn’t escape. He stands still in the middle of it all. And he rises from that walking nightmare as The Batman.

For a long time, my meditation practice was the opposite of that. If anything distracted me—noise, discomfort, restlessness, big emotions—I believed it wasn’t a “good” meditation. If the conditions weren’t quiet, clean, serene, I thought the practice was a failure.

Now I’ve come to learn that my distractions aren’t distractions.

If everything is calm and pleasant, if nothing is tugging at me, that’s usually when the practice produces the least insight. The discomforts, the interruptions, the agitation—those aren’t distractions. They’re the curriculum.

What I’m learning is how to include everything.

To be open and flexible like seaweed on the ocean floor—bending, swaying, moving with turbulence—rather than rigid like a dry twig in a windstorm, snapping the moment the pressure gets too real.

Off the cushion, this has changed everything too.

My practice now teaches me that the things that scare me—the rooms I want to leave, the conversations I want to exit, the sensations that tell me I can’t be here—those are the exact places where my power is waiting to teach. Those are the places where true peace is forged by fire.

So instead of bolting, I’m training to stay.

Instead of numbing or drugging, I’m training to feel.

Instead of running, I’m training to stand still.

If I can stare down the things I’m convinced I can’t do - the things I’m sure I can’t live without - I learn my power.

That’s when my meditation practice meets the Dharma.

It’s a much longer road to peace, (a bumpier road too) but the calm I’m learning now doesn’t come from forcing myself to relax. It comes from allowing myself to wake up. From opening the eyes of my heart instead of armoring them.

This is the bodhicitta - the awakened heart - the willingness to stay present with what is, even when it’s uncomfortable or frightening or feels impossible.

I don’t practice so I can escape the world anymore. I practice so I can stand fully inside it. Like Bruce Wayne without the muscles or the money, I’m discovering I can do all kinds of things I thought I couldn’t, everyday.

And by learning that I can be still in the very places I want to run from, I’ve found a deeper, more sustaining, almost supernatural calm—the kind the Dharma has been pointing to all along.

The tiger is powerful. It is his.
It is his protector. His fortress. His “baseball ready.”
His superpower, resting deep beneath the surface, waiting to make him strong. It would be there to help him fight and stand up for himself when he needed it.

But the tiger is also blind.
A big, uncontrollable animal that tears through everything in its path.

So while it has his back, it can also cause real harm when it’s on the loose.

I tell him he can talk to his tiger, keep it calm.
But the tiger only speaks one language: breath.

Bring all your attention to your breathing, and the tiger comes under control.
The deeper and lower the breath, the more authority he has.

I love this analogy.
And he does too.

He made a book about it.

It came as a surprise when this analogy came back around to me.

When I began going to recovery meetings, I started hearing the term of learning to walk with the tiger.

-

I wrote this on one of those days where the tiger’s got me by the leg.

The kind where the itch is real.
Where my hand wants to reach for Instagram and scroll until my eyes burn.
Where distraction feels invigorating.

Thank God for the OPAL app. I bought it by accident, thinking I was just starting the free trial. Now it locks me out all day. I have to beg it to let me back in.

It lets me back in once. Then I’m out again.
It slowed me down just enough to rethink it all.

I sit with it.
I eat.
I don’t roll a joint.
I don’t phone a friend.
I don’t disappear into the feed.

I just sit there.
I breathe.

As I switch from sitting to walking on my wooden floor.

Eventually, the pull loosens. The tiger loosens his grip.
It doesn’t leave, but it sits with me. It walks with me.

Then I get back to work.
And so does the tiger.