As the Buddha said,

“Looking after oneself, one looks after others.
Looking after others, one looks after oneself.”

(Attānaṃ rakkhanto paraṃ rakkhati.
Paraṃ rakkhanto attānaṃ rakkhati.)

Over the last 33 days of our 100 Days of Lovingkindness, I’ve written a blog post every day. Here’s a list of all the posts I’ve written, offering teachings on developing lovingkindness and compassion.

I hope you’re finding all this useful. If you haven’t had a chance to read these posts yet, then of course they’ll be there for you in the future.

Many people have said that they’ve benefited from this writing I’m doing, and it’s even been suggested that I turn all these posts into a book. I feel …

At Wildmind, ee sit, we develop lovingkindness, and we express that love by sharing our experience though our blog and through our structured guides to meditation.

And we hope that this will in turn lead you to sit, to develop love, and to give back so that you support our activities.

Wildmind is increasingly supported by dana (the Buddhist word for donations) these days. We’ve received lots of one-time donations, but we feel particularly grateful to those who make a regular monthly contribution to our running costs.

In fact, people who have set up a recurring donation will receive free copies of any creative work that I produce during the …

Wildmind has been on the receiving end of a lot of love these days. Needless to say, this has been an enjoyable and even inspiring experience.

Not only have a lot of people been writing to express appreciation, but we’ve received many donations, which are all very much appreciated. (If you don’t have time and want to skip to the tl;dr — too long, didn’t read — version, then click here.)

We’ve always tried to self-fund our work (encouraging the practice of meditation), by charging for classes, selling guided meditation CDs and, more recently, selling other meditation supplies. That went well until the recession hit, and we’d been increasingly struggling until the …

Here’s what I’m planning. I want to create more, and specifically I want to record two meditation audio programs this year. To do this I need to take a couple of months off from teaching my online courses, which creates a bit of a financial problem for Wildmind because we’ll be earning less and because we live on the edge (and not always on the right side of the edge!)

So, I’m asking for donations. And anyone who makes a one time-donation of $15 or more, or who sets up a recurring donation of any amount will receive a free download of the first of these programs, which will be …

“We make a living by what we make, but we make a life by what we give.” These words are often attributed to Winston Churchill, but they appear to be the work of the prolific “anon.”

I had trouble sleeping last night, which is very unusual for me. I was rather anxious about money, since Wildmind had a very bad year financially and lost a lot of money. I’d actually expected to make a loss since we moved into a larger office and I took on an office assistant to free me up to spend more time on creative tasks. But working on the end of year accounts was rather troubling, because the …

Sit : Love : Give is two things.

First, it’s what we do. We believe in the power of meditation to bring more mindfulness and compassion to the world in order to make it a better place. So we sit.

Through sitting we develop love.

Out of love we offer Wildmind to the world, in order to make meditation more accessible. Google Analytics tells us that there were 2.5 million page views on out site last year. That represents a lot of learning about meditation, and hopefully a lot of practice of meditation too. That’s our giving.

And second, we encourage you to sit, to develop love, and to give to the …

Starts January 24: runs for 12 weeks.

Meditation has transformed my life, and there’s nothing I love to see more than people learning to become happier and more fulfilled in their own lives.

Two years ago I started running meditation workshops, using the videoconferencing capabilities of Skype. These courses have been highly successful. I’ve now switched to teaching those courses on Google Plus, where the videoconferencing experience is much smoother, and the courses are going even better.

What will we learn?

This workshop is suitable for people who have just learned meditation and for people who have been practicing for years. It looks at two very practical teachings from the Buddhist tradition: the five hindrances …

Wildmind recently went ad-free. The income from carrying ads was certainly useful — it costs a lot to run a site this size — but carrying advertising here seemed both esthetically and ethically ugly. So they’ve gone! And we feel great about it!

However, it takes about 80–100 hours a month to curate, write, edit, and post the articles you read here, and if you enjoy and benefit from what we do, we’d ask you to consider making a regular donation.

Dana, or giving, is an ancient Buddhist tradition, and we’d much rather rely on the generosity of you, our readers, than bombard you with advertising.

We’re calling …

One of the most frustrating things in my life is that for the last few months, because of a change in my wife’s work schedule, I haven’t been able to get up to the prison I’ve been teaching in for the last seven years. I miss the guys there. I regard them as part of my “sangha” (spiritual community). I have great respect for them as spiritual practitioners because of the sheer effort they have to make in order to remain sane and balanced in a very challenging environment. Not only do they stay sane and balanced, but some of them bring about huge changes in their lives. …

I’m fascinated by the psychology of giving and/or financial exchanges.

Just this morning I was noticing my hesitation in committing to pay 99¢ for an iPhone app without having tried it first. But when I go into a coffee shop I happily plonk down $1.50 or so for a cup of Joe, without hesitating or asking for a free trial. The coffee will last me for 20 minutes, while I might end up using the app on a daily basis for an indefinite period of time. There’s no guarantee I’m going to find the coffee pleasant. Screwy, but normal.

One peculiarity regarding money is that people who have less of it are …