“We have been raised to fear…our deepest cravings. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for…many facets of our own oppression.” – Audre Lourde
From the Sakkapanha Sutta:
2.2 Sakka asked, ‘What gives rise to jealousy and avarice? What is their origin, how are they born, how do they arise? Owing to the presence of what do they arose, owing to the absence of what do they arise?’
The...
I have a friend who hates his job because it’s extremely stressful. Whenever he’s having a particularly bad day, he fantasizes about winning millions of dollars so he can leave his job and be happy. So during his lunch break he’ll go to the corner...
There’s that silly argument about disappointment that goes something like this: since you don’t live in a hut, and you’re not a slave, and you’re not starving, then you have no right to be disappointed. It’s silly because it doesn’t...
Lately it's been difficult to write about Occupy Wall Street both for lack of time (what with all the marches, rallies, and meetings) and also because there's so much to say. It's hard to know where to start. There are a...
Sometimes I feel the... need (dammit, I was hoping to avoid that word, you’ll understand in a minute) to go back to basics in my practice. Why? Because I often get stuck on something very simple. If the path to happiness is to let go of...
My question this week: is it possible to experience joy in not getting what you want? Or, to turn the sword of inquisition around, how can I personally have joy in my life while not getting what I want?
And what would happen if I...
The Alexander McQueen exhibit stirs up emotions via the senses of sight, sound and touch (don’t touch the exhibits, but ooh those feathers look so soft, and the leather, and the chains). Taste and smell are less obviously involved, but...
One of the most vivid metaphors for the human condition that I've come across since joining the Interdependence Project is that of the Hungry Ghost. These Tibetan deities are not fully alive and crave food to fill their enormous bloated...
I confess to being somewhat swept up in the recent media frenzy over the new iPad 2. Sure, I already have the original version (which incidentally has more computing power than the Apollo 11 and does everything I want it to) but now there...
I just read a fascinating article on Mark Zuckerberg for Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2010:
One of the interests Zuckerberg lists on his Facebook page is "Eliminating Desire."
Take a 2,600-year-old spiritual tradition from Asia and drop it into the blender of postmodern American consumer culture. Add science and multiculturalism to taste, and mix at Internet speed. This is 21st-Century Buddhism -- a weekly blog for the...
