Meditation can change your life and your very sense of who you are. There is a reason it has been around for thousands of years and practiced by people from all walks of life and all parts of the globe. There is a common myth...
Life's like that sometimes. We encounter obstacles -- or create obstacles in our minds -- and the frustration we feel becomes the obstacle. But if you can relax into it, look at what's happening in the moment, sometimes it just eases.
Daily Sit invites you to practice meditation with a live online community. Inspired by "Sitting Project," a daily meditation piece, Kim Brown and I thought it would be supportive to the community to offer an online interactive presence for...
Monday morning, November the fifth. My thirty-fifth birthday.
My 3-year-old son, Oscar, woke early that morning. After feeding him a quick bowl of flaked corn cereal with hemp milk, I whooshed him into his sweater and rain boots and out the door. In...
“There are beings everywhere. That is the problem” Ponlop Rinpoche said when I saw him speak a few months ago.
We mistakenly think that our experience and our comfort in each moment are more important than that of others. At times I notice that I am...
In the book My Stroke of Insight, brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor explains that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous system and body—is only a minute and a half, a mere ninety...
We live in a world that emphasizes results, rewards, and winning.
If we buy something at a store we get our rewards card swiped in order to accumulate points that lead to a future benefit. Many of us get up early in the morning in order to...
My neighbor has a great big dog. It's a little smaller than a horse. You can't go outside with a dog like that without training it first. Otherwise, it'll just pull you down the street, terrifying every man, woman, and child along the way.
Our minds...
Beings are numberless, I vow to save them Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to end them Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it.
-- The Four Vows of the Bodhisattva
I had just walked across the Williamsburg Bridge. Some other people walking across the bridge said the blackened city skyline looked cool. I declined to entertain this idea, only saying I had never seen my city like this,...
The Chöd practice, which seeks to feed rather than fight what appears to be the 'enemy,' offers a much needed new paradigm for today's world that promotes compassion and integration instead of polarization.” Lama Tsultrim Allione
If right now, as in right this second, were to launch itself into this text, it would talk about meditation, and it would talk about disaster. It would talk about anger, and it would talk about giving. It would talk about anxiety, and it would talk...
I am not so naive as to think we can just will away a tragedy with optimism and a sunny disposition. What struck the East Coast of the United States this week was devastating. As a New Yorker, I was heart-broken to see my city torn asunder once...
Not all that long ago our Seattle IDP group discussed the Buddha’s teachings of the Noble Eight-Fold Path. Having just breezed through these texts over the years, I was grateful to finally sit down and really put some effort into seeing what...
"'Trust yourself' doesn't mean 'believe your thoughts'. It means to allow yourself to not know and don't fill it up with an opinion." Sokuzan Bob Brown
There is nothing I can say or do here in this post that will help anyone in NYC. I am writing to consider how a Buddhist practice can be helpful today.
In Seattle, the seasons begin and end abruptly. It was rainy and cold through June and then one day - right around the fourth of July - Bam! The sun came out and stayed out through early October, when Swoosh - the clouds and rain returned. The...
