"The issue here is much more than financial reward: Most people never get the opportunity to be meaningfully involved in the working of the system."- Max DePree
Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.
What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,...
A clay Buddha cannot pass through water.
A wooden Buddha cannot pass through fire.
A metal Buddha cannot pass through a furnace.
- Case 96: Joshu’s Three Turning Words
When we have too...
Yesterday, along with 18 other IDP students, I became a graduate of the Teacher Training Program. This was a year-long intensive immersion experience which took place over six weekend retreats, along with lots of studying and...
The greatest gift you can give or receive is to know that you are enough. Good enough, bad enough, pretty enough, valuable enough -- and that the others in your life also are enough, just as they are.
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...
This week's podcast features a lecture by Ethan Nichtern titled "Radical Buddhism and the Paradox of Acceptance." The lecture was given on November 10th 2011 in Portland Oregon. This is the first of a two part podcast.
Flipping through the catalog for a big name yoga and retreat center, I was shocked to notice that they advertised their yoga teacher training programs as “Yoga Alliance Approved.” Misrepresentations like this are the dirty little...
"What matters most" was printed in a fancy red font on the moving boxes set on the curb on trash day. I wondered if that was true for the family who had just moved, that the things that had been in those boxes were what mattered...
Recently, I participated in the "closing" of a Kagyu Tibetan Retreat at Kagyu Thubten Choling monastery in upstate New York. These traditional Tibetan retreats last for three years, three weeks, and three days...
What is holding you back anyway?
One answer to this question for all of us is DOUBT, one of the fabulous Five Hindrances that slow us, stop us and also serve as teachers on the path.
Here is how doubt works for me.
I doubt myself.
I doubt...
I love Thanksgiving. For one day we stop and give thanks. Every year I see people get genuinely choked up about their many blessings, family, bountiful food, a warm home, and it’s beautiful.
And then... it ends.
This week's podcast features a lecture by Ethan Nichtern on the practice of Tonglen. The lecture was given on October 24th 2011 in New York City. This is the second of a two part podcast.
Remember these two things: be loving and wait for gratitude to arrive. And when it comes, don’t resist, because the ego may create some resistance. Gratitude goes against the ego.
This weeks podcast features a lecture by Ethan Nichtern on the practice of Tonglen. The lecture was given on October 24th 2011 in New York City. This is the first of a two part podcast.
I am so happy about starting up the Seattle Interdependence Project.
I imagine a space where people can come to learn to work with their minds as I did a few years ago at IDP NYC. I am excited to be able to share this with the city that has...
