Last week I attended my first 'weekthun,' or weeklong meditation retreat in the Shambhala tradition. In order to honor the silent aspect of the retreat, I attempted to read only dharma books.
so crisp. the dot stands but when dissected as start it blurs indistinct points of beginnings middles, ends trace linear your nose...disappears even in-between lies to lovers needing her measurably t/here.
(Photo: Mari Griffin)
I did not recognize you as fear
Deep vibrating abyssI did not recognize you as fearI did not recognize you as fearBecause your power has the births of many stars in its belly
Emptiness, fullness, luminosity, suchness: The vibrancy of experience and its simultaneous insignificance. We always want to hold on to things, even concepts like emptiness. So I was wondering, how can my lover and I better experience...
An old friend told me he felt like something was missing in his life. He talked about filling a void. He took a new job thinking that would solve it. But the void was still there. He talked about his lack of mindfulness, his habit of over-...
... We have turned into very unnatural beings. But with all our difficulties, we have an opportunity open to us that no other animal has. A cat is the Wonder; but the cat doesn't know that, it just lives it.* But as human beings we have the capacity...
A friend who is far smarter than I once told me that it’s possible that both time and space not to exist. This was too much for me. The idea that one moment (time) would not follow the next and that in the place of something (space) there...
What if, instead of merely accepting the inevitable truth that everyone will die, we saw them as already dead? Does that subtle shift make a difference?
Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to better understand depression, it’s causes, and how it can best be alleviated. It’s not that I’m depressed--in fact I’m happy to report that I’m rarely...
"Some Westerners have misinterpreted the second-turning teachings on shunyata as nihilistic. If all things are empty, it is mistakenly thought, then nothing has any value and everything is finally meaningless. Why bother to be a decent...
Yo, Mr. B,
Hey, man. Thanks for reading this. I know you probably get, like, lots of mail and stuff, and you’re probably super busy, so thank you. Maybe you won’t even see this. I don’t know... whatever.
So, I heard about...
The Buddhist concept of emptiness – the idea that nothing is permanent or exists independently, that there is no self – is a hard one for some people, but I find it comforting, For me, hearing that the self doesn’t exist, that we...
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Last night, Patrick Groneman and I grabbed some falafels and hung out after work at a small place we sometimes go after meditation class at IDP on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, The Three Monkeys. It...
"If we are to save ourselves from spiritual materialism ... the introduction of boredom and repetitiousness is extremely important. Without it we have no hope." - Trungpa Rinpoche from "The Myth of Freedom...
I just recently found out about a brilliant upcoming lecture series at the Rubin Museum of Art on Talk About Nothing featuring the illustrious likes of Laurie Anderson, Bill Viola and Karen Armstrong. Not a tad bit ironically, its producer, Tim...
