People who are just getting started with a regular meditation practice often have three questions: 1) how often should I practice?, 2) how long should I meditate for? and 3) when can I expect to see results?
I love writing poetry. I haven't done it in a while, but I do have a backlog of poetry I have not shared with many people. It is good to have a place like The Interdependence Project where what makes each of us unique is celebrated,...
I am a runner—a reluctant runner. After nearly three decades of pounding the streets, my runner’s high has reached an all-time low, and unless I am filled to the brim with caffeine, I mostly grin and bear it, and wait for my run to be...
Ego keeps busy trying to build a wall around itself, to shut itself away from the “other.” Then, of course, having created this barrier, immediately the ego also wants to communicate with the other, which it now perceives as “outside” or not part of...
“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.’ I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”
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Praying to God for a particular outcome, the Dalai Lama says, shows a lack of confidence in ourselves and our actions, along with laziness and unwillingness to work.
Sometimes you hear a voice through
the door calling you, as fish out of
water hear the waves, or a hunting
falcon hears the drum's come back.
This turning toward what you deeply love
saves you …
—Rumi
Emptiness, fullness, luminosity, suchness: The vibrancy of experience and its simultaneous insignificance. We always want to hold on to things, even concepts like emptiness. So I was wondering, how can my lover and I better experience...
The consistent conduct of people of the Way is like the flowing clouds with no grasping mind, like the full moon reflecting universally, not confined anywhere, glistening within each of the ten thousand forms.
In the past year, our sangha has experienced all the vicissitudes of existence; old age, sickness, and death. Several of us lost their parents; one member's father had a serious heart attack; another's mother had breast cancer; yet...
I really feel that some people neglect and overlook compassion because they associate it with religion. Of course, everyone is free to choose whether they pay religion any regard, but to neglect compassion is a mistake because it is the...
As it turns grey again here in Seattle, after a long sunny summer, I noticed that I slipped quickly back into melancholy. I am a moody person. Working with myself in the Buddhist context has taught me not to take my moods seriously. This means that...
I'm terribly late, a fact which my 18-month old son Oscar apparently does not understand. The whole morning is like nails on a chalkboard played in slow motion. In need of coffee, I set out from home under clear skies.
The Human Route
by Zen Master Seung Sahn on Sep 1, 1981
Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Mindfulness is not what you do in your spare time. Mindfulness is what you do all the time. Mindfulness is being in touch with the present moment, with your original nature, which is always present but gets buried under busyness and thoughts of what...
