I get that we're called upon to extend lovingkindness to all beings without discrimination. This looks great on paper and I agree (at least theoretically), but there are some people that make this pretty damned challenging to put into practice...
You see it, or hear it, or feel it, or know it: the suffering of others. It is right there in front of you. Do something about it!
It saddens me with I see the ethics of Buddhism deflate like someone surreptitiously letting the...
Waking up next to a strange bedfellow? There's gotta be a compassionate way out of this one...
Before Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment at age 35 he was a confused twenty and thirty-something looking to learn how to live a...
(follow Ethan on Facebook or Twitter)
I thought it was good to take a moment to talk about Buddhist perspectives on working with emotions. The three quotes below come from three of my personal teachers, beginning with my main teacher Sakyong...
One of my not so guilty pleasures is the new Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) and, in particular, its riveting new series Our America with Lisa Ling. Oh my does Lisa Ling BRING IT. Pursuing the stories often ignored by the main stream media (MSM), in...
(follow Ethan on Facebook or Twitter)
IDP Lineage Mentor, Buddhist teacher, and author Sharon Salzberg, who will teach one of our core meditation retreats this Spring, was interviewed on ABC last week, and has been receiving a lot of good press...
It’s hard to tell this story, my story, without falling into a Lifetime Movie or Oprah like structure. As uplifting and reassuring as “overcoming the odds” stories can be, I find them problematic for many reasons. So to the best...
As a Buddhist UFC fan who's now in the MMA business, I check my thinking. Isn't ahmisa fundamental to Buddhism? Am I furthering violence in an interdependent world? A few thoughts:
This podcast features an interview with Susan Piver and Natalie Goldberg in which they discuss writing and its relationship to Dharma practice.
Natalie Goldberg is a poet, teacher, and the author of eleven books, including her classic Writing...
In almost every dharma talk I've ever heard at any number of meditation or yoga centers I've visited in New York, one place keeps popping up as the location most notorious for inspiring a complete lack of presence: the New York City subway...
One of IDP's community members is working on some pretty interesting stuff on empathy and neurology and I was lucky enough to have Patrick Groneman turn me onto her site. I'll be mining this site for many future posts, but this week I was...
Josh Smith is high on my list of top ten favorite living artists (the list includes Tauba Auerbach, Wade Guyton, Seth Price, Albert Oehlen, Christian Marclay, Thomas Ruff, etc.) and I went into this show like it was the second coming.
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...
(follow Ethan on Facebook or Twitter)
Over the weekend, while rereading the posthumously published Smile at Fear by Chogyam Trungpa, I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before - Trungpa Rinpoche made reference in passing to...
It seems like the blog has been heavy with mostly-naked women this week. My Facebook news feed has had me doing double-takes -- is this post from IDP or shewired? (Shewired.com is my source of lesbian-oriented entertainment news. Check it out.)...
(follow Ethan on Facebook or Twitter)
Following the nonviolent revolution in Egypt, as well as the underreported massive teacher protests in Wisconsin, several friends have forwarded me articles that reintroduce the work of Gene Sharp, an...
There's been a lot of talk about this show and the other show by Bradley at Gavin Brown's. I saw the Canada show but not the GBE show. Some people think it's a big trick, others think it's terrible. What do you think?
