About The Practice of Life
Life is the gift we are given. We open it with intention and practice.
Sign up to receive inspiration for personal and collective liberation, rooted in the teachings of the Buddha as well as my own meandering yet magnificent life journey.
Welcome, and thank you for being here!
For the past few decades, I’ve been exploring what it means to live an intentional life, one rooted in contemplative practice. It makes all the difference.
Years ago I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and had a long commute from the East Bay to my workplace in the City. Plenty of days I arrived at work and realized I had no idea what had happened on my commute. Essentially, I had gone on autopilot. This disturbed me! It’s common for that to happen in life as well — we can be on autopilot and land up in the oddest places in our lives, not all of them good. But it’s a different story when we bring effort into waking up to our life, when we have practices that help us to come out of a trance and to live in alignment with our values and hopes. That’s what I aspire to, and that’s the purpose of this Substack.
I have a free-range mind so you’ll encounter all kinds of topics here, but I especially like to explore right livelihood, creativity, spirituality, and current events/socially engaged Buddhism. At the root of all if it, I try to infuse various forms of contemplative practice into my perspective and my writing. One of my (few) claims to fame is that I’m the co-creator of the Tree of Contemplative Practices, a tool that was developed during my time as Research Director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.
What to expect when you sign up (and yes, it’s free!)
When you subscribe to The Practice of Life, you can expect weekly posts/emails:
Full moon posts are explorations on living in these times with intention and awareness (and may touch on the apocalypse because that’s what we’re in).
New moon posts are where I show off my curator skills and put together a list called “3 Good Things.”
On the weeks in-between, a post that often features some of my favorite past writing. I’m also working on a memoir, so I may be posting excerpts from that work-in-progress.
That’s a helpful structure for me — if I ever need to remember a writing deadline I just look up at the night sky.
My intention is for this to be a home for good writing. In general I have an aversion to nouns and titles, but the one noun I fully embrace is “writer.” That is my craft, it’s my way of expressing myself and exploring the world, and that’s what I commit to continually improving.
About Maia
A cultural anthropologist, writer, and longtime Zen meditation practitioner, Maia Duerr offers mindfulness and other reflective practices that cultivate compassion, awareness, and social transformation.
Maia is the author of Work That Matters: How to Create a Livelihood That Reflects Your Core Intention (Parallax Press), and she takes joy in supporting people to find the work they are meant to do, as well as navigate through life transitions with mindful awareness. She offers Guidance + Encouragement sessions (kinda like coaching but not exactly) for these purposes. You can learn more about her and her body of work on her website.
Maia is grateful to be a guest living on the Tewa homelands, also known as Northern New Mexico, with a very special rescue dog named Lucy.
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What’s the deal with Paid and Free Subscriptions?
I’m still feeling my way into the Substack world, but in general my ethos is based on the Buddhist principle of dana, a Pali word that means something like “giving,” “offering,” and “generosity.”
Everything I write here is freely offered, and if you would like to express your appreciation for those writings and support my livelihood in a material way, your paid subscription is greatly appreciated. For the time being, paid and free subscribers get exactly the same things, there are no paywalls here and everyone is welcome to comment on my posts.
Some of my posts have a “Donate” button where you can give a one-time donation if you’re not able to do a paid subscription. Actually, look, there’s one, right here!
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