Hi Everyone 👋 There's an old story about a king who asked his wise men for a sentence that would be true in every circumstance. They gave him this: This too shall pass. It's true. It's also easy to hear as a dismissal. "Cheer up, it'll be over soon." That's not what it means. What it means is that nothing stays. Not the good, not the bad. Not the shame, not the joy, not the exhaustion, not the clarity. Everything arises and passes away. That's not a reason to grit your teeth and wait it out. It's a reason to stop treating this moment as if it's permanent. When you're in a low season, the mind says: this is forever. This is who I am now. I've broken something I can't fix. That's the lie. Not the pain—the pain is real—but the permanence. The pain is a visitor. The shame is a visitor. Even the sense that it will never end is a visitor. You don't have to push the visitor out. You just have to stop believing it's moved in for good. So today, if you're low, try this. Don't try to feel better. Just notice: this is a weather system, not a climate. It's moving through. It will move through. And you—the awareness that notices it—are not the weather. All conditioned things are impermanent. The Buddha said that as a teaching, but also as a comfort. Whatever this is, it's passing. You don't have to hurry it along. You just have to let it pass. With Love ❤️ Always Mark

Hi Everyone 👋 Some days the practice is easy. The breath comes, the mind settles, and there's a bit of space around things. Those days are lovely. They're also not the point. The point is the days when it all feels impossible. When you're low, or ashamed, or so tired you can't remember what calm ever felt like. When sitting down to meditate feels like the last thing on earth you want to do. Those are the days the practice is actually for. The Buddha didn't teach mindfulness for people who already had it together. He taught it for people in the middle of the mess—grief, regret, fear, confusion. The whole path is designed for exactly the state you're in right now. So here's what I'd offer, from one imperfect practitioner to another. On the hard days, lower the bar. Not as a compromise. As wisdom. Three breaths is a full practice. Noticing you're clenching your jaw is a full practice. Saying "this is hard" and meaning it is a full practice. Putting your hand on your chest for ten seconds is a full practice. You don't have to feel peaceful. You just have to show up, however briefly, however badly. The practice isn't the feeling. It's the turning towards. The Tao abides in non-action, yet nothing is left undone. Even three breaths count. Especially three breaths. With Love ❤️ Always Mark

Hi Everyone 👋 A few years back I sat with a mother who told me she'd stopped taking her son to the supermarket. Not because of the meltdowns—she'd learned to ride those out. Because of the looks. The sighs. The woman who said, loud enough to be heard, "he'd behave if you were firmer." She wasn't complaining about her son. She was complaining about the world's insistence that he be somebody else. That's the thing nobody warns you about. The exhaustion isn't only the child. It's the constant, grinding work of explaining, defending, advocating, absorbing judgment, and holding your child steady while you're being knocked off balance yourself. Add a job, a course, a calling, and you've got a nervous system running on fumes and guilt. There's a very old story that speaks to this. Zhuangzi, the other great Daoist, the more mischievous one, tells of a carpenter called Shi who walks past an enormous oak tree growing at a shrine. It's vast, ancient, branches spreading out over hundreds of oxen. Everyone else is gawping at it. Shi doesn't even look. His apprentice asks why. Shi says: it's useless. Bad wood. You couldn't build a boat, a coffin, a door out of it. Good for nothing, which is why it's lived so long. That night the oak appears to him in a dream and gives him a bit of a telling off. What are you comparing me to? You're comparing me to the useful trees—the pear, the orange, the apple. They bear fruit, and then they're picked at, torn at, broken. They don't live out their years. I've spent a very long time learning to be useless. If I'd been useful, I'd have been cut down long ago. Zhuangzi's point isn't that uselessness is noble in some sentimental way. It's that the world has a very narrow idea of what a thing is for, and anything that doesn't fit gets hacked about until it does—or gets discarded. Your child doesn't fit the world's idea. Neither, probably, do you. The world looks at an autistic child and sees a set of deficits to be corrected. The world looks at a burnt-out mother and sees someone not coping. Neither is the truth. Both are the world's narrowness wearing the mask of common sense.