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...
A tornado in Oklahoma killed dozens of people Monday and flattened whole neighborhoods in certainly the most destructive tornado in decades. Winds faster than 200 miles per hour were recorded, and at one point, the tornado measured over...
I recently wrote this reflection for an ISHTA Yoga training I am taking through The Table. While here at IDP we are really focused on secular Buddhism, there are definite parallels with Yoga and I know some other folks here practice Yoga, too...
When I began practicing Buddhism, I started attending a local Tibetan center because it was the only local center in which practices were conducted in English and where I, as a teenager from a poor family, didn't have to shell out much for...
Good morning or afternoon or evening, Contemplation Station travelers. We took advantage of current research into warp drive technology and got the train ready for space travel. Now, as you can see, we are orbiting Tau Ceti — we are like another...
Membership month at IDP is winding down -- although, really, you can join at any time during the year -- so I wanted to take advantage of the space that I get on the blog every week to share why I'm a member and encourage you to join up.
I'm obsessively checking my Twitter feed for updates on Boston and Watertown. To me, here in New York, events of this week feel both close to home and far away. This poem by Mary Oliver keeps coming into my head.
Beyond the Snow Belt
I spend a lot of time thinking about what people need from each other in order to feel connected, cohesive, and resilient. Buddhism, historically, has not taken a developmental view of how we reach a healthy baseline of functioning in work,...
Buddhist monks in Burma are accused of inciting violence against ethnic Muslims that has killed 43 people, destroyed or damaged 992 buildings, including five mosques, and displaced 12,000 people in a town of 100,000.
Ordinarily when we can't handle powerful feelings such as pain or fear we avoid them because they overwhelm us or make us feel bad. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle of anxiety and avoidance, guilt and shame. What I call Behavioral Buddhism is...
In the class I am co-teaching with Ethan Nichtern and Miles Neale on Buddhism and Psychology: Spiritual Awakening NOT Spiritual Bypassing at the Interdependence Project, there has been a good deal of discussion — and...
Caroline Brett conducts a detailed inquiry into how practitioners of Vajrayana, Zen, and Hindu Tantra natively distinguish between mystical and psychotic states.
Last week was not so much fun, let me put it that way. In case you’re just tuning in now, I was struggling a great deal trying to figure out whether or not to take my Buddhist refuge vow this past weekend. Since the vow was taking place right...
In this post, "Maladjusted Buddhism," on Patheos.com, blogger Nathan Thompson argues that Westerners who have converted to Buddhism are too tied to psychology and its focus on bringing everything toward a norm. Psychology, he says, works with...
Memories are foundational for our sense of self. This is particularly true for early childhood memories (which the scientists tell us are the most unreliable of all).
I'm in Thailand this week, and I've noticed that a lot of my Buddhist co-workers talk a lot about generating merit. For example, they'll say things like, "I'm going to the wat (a Thai Buddhist temple) for a few weeks to generate...
You can tell whether something is an aspiration or a god -- whether it's an intention to work toward something or a desire to simply have it -- by the tension around it.
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I recently read on an Italian blog a quote playfully attributed to God: "'Everybody's depressed because "this pope is also against the gays." Remember, people, he's the head of the church, not the Indian from the Village People."' 1
It's clear, from the point of view of a dharma practitioner, that technology has been of great benefit to those who live a distance from practice centers. I've taken dozens of IDP's study-at-home classes and listened to hours of talks by teachers I...
Buddhism, at its base, is genderless. The Buddha taught to both men and women, and he taught them the same techniques to achieve liberation from suffering. But since that time Buddhists have built a lot of male-dominated structures on that space.
Right speech, sometimes called Wise or Skillful Speech, is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path to liberation from suffering. ... The importance of speech in ethical conduct is clear, Bikkhu Bodhi says in his guide to...
