Damian Echols spent 18 years in prison for murders he didn't commit and was freed nearly two
years ago. He lived on Death Row, and he suffered physically and mentally, he says. To cope with that, he learned eastern methods of working with the body...
Buddhism isn't what you do in meditation; that's meditation. Buddhism is how you walk in the world. I heard that phrasing from a teacher at one of the first Buddhist retreats I attended several years ago, and it stuck with me.
I'm a little short on words this week. My grandmother died on Wednesday, after a long battle with Alzheimer's. I've been thinking a lot about impermanence and about the ways we can there for each other when ruptures like death or disaster happen.
It’s often said that all of us essentially want the same two things: to be happy and to be free from suffering. And this desire to be happy and to not suffer is a great equalizer in that most of our behavior is fueled by these two desires we...
Meditation is about making friends with our whole being and learning to accept what we're tempted to reject, suppress, or avoid because it feels uncomfortable. I know, from personal experience, that's a beneficial thing. Now there's scientific...
Two weeks ago I was in a Google+ hangout, cat across my crossed legs, getting ready to meditate, and one of the other participants commented that it sounded like there was a tiger in the room. The cat's purring had gotten louder as her time grew...
People sometimes make assumptions about me because I chose to ordain last year as a Zen monk. It’s often presumed that I must be the most together person around, one who sits in formal meditation for hours and hours each day without flinching...
To let it be or not to let it be? That is the question. In a prescient article titled “You Think You Lost Your Thought, Well I Saw Her Yesterday-ay” published on Tuesday, Emily Herzlin asked another wonderful question: if we have a creative idea...
Q: How do I explain Buddhism to my religiously conservative parents?
I remember being in a bar one night and a newer meditator asked me about coming out to their parents as a Buddhist.
"You make it sound like you're telling them you're gay," I said...
The ant scurried all over my book, distracting me as he wandered aimlessly amidst the printed lines. One flick of my finger or a puff of air from my lips would send the little bug flying far away – out of sight and out of mind, and probably out of...
Anyone who has ever practiced mindfulness knows that there is something akin to a wild animal living inside each of us. We call that wild animal "mind." If you stop for just a minute, right now, and pay attention to what your mind is telling you, I...
Joss Whedon delivered the commencement speech last month at Wesleyan University. As you might expect, from the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and The Avengers, it wasn't what you'd expect. He reflects on the commencement speech at his...
In a recent Tricycle blog post subtitled “Chinese Policing Tibetan Areas Suffer from PTSD” posted on the Tricycle blog, Alex Caring-Lobel describes the current state of T
Recently I was having one of my weekly interviews with my teacher. I was talking about how hard a time I was still having working through the emotions around my recent break-up. It’d been just over two months, and I was feeling as if the hurt...
Does political division stem from frustration over what we see as a common good for us as well as others, or frustration over not getting what we want in spite of what’s really best for others? Or both? And how does the answer (if any) relate to our...
Many years ago my family was visiting friends on Memorial Day. My youngest child was an infant; the older one was 2. My friends' sons were marching in her small midwestern town's Memorial Day parade. Another visitor offered to stay at the house with...
I was telling a Buddhist teacher about the latest drama in my life, and the farther I got into my twisted tale of miscommunication and projection, the bigger his smile got. "This is great!" he enthused. "You've got so much to work with!"
Sometimes waves of sadness crash over us that are so heavily charged it feels as if there will never again be any room in our hearts for any sort of happiness or peace of mind.
Whenever anger arises our tendency is to try to rid ourselves of...
Pope Francis, the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, recognized that non-Catholics, including atheists, humanists, and other secular folks, can still have a moral compass. "We must meet one another doing good," he said on Wednesday. This comes as a...
One of the stickier concepts from Indo-Tibetan Buddhism that is difficult to translate, both into the English language and in Western culture, is “merit” (Tib. བསོད་ནམས་ bsod nams, Skt. punya). There is also another tricky layer to this notion: the...
Whenever I manage to get a driver’s license, I want to drive a hearse with a baby crib in the back. It will serve as an apt reminder of the constantly turning nature of birth and death.
