News stories are not the conversation starters they used to be. In the day, I could fill an awkward gap by saying “Guess what I heard on NPR this morning?” I don’t use that line anymore. These are intense times. We need to find our footing in an information age that may be getting the…
I struggle with my emotions. Practicing mindfulness of emotions helps a lot, but sometimes I am just plain sad or overcome by all that is untenable in the world, borrowing a line from Brother Steindl-Rast. I feel that I should be above it all, but mostly I’m not. Reading lines from ancient Zen stories, ones…
Yes, I know pandemics happen. Evolution hurts sometimes, I guess. Writing in the New York Times on September 23rd of this year, the epidemiologist and physician Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran observed Evolution can sometimes look like destruction to the untrained eye. We just passed 200,000 deaths here in the USA attributed to Covid-19. Yes, in our…
OK, that post title is a bit of click-bait. But you’re here now. So let me explain how the 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen’s phrase is the title of this post. Some of you reading this know I tested positive for Covid-19 on July 9. At present five co-workers on the same shift on…
As a species we seem to have solidified a very real revulsion for the inevitable, as well as toward the smaller slights along the way. We hide death and suffering like some grand failing; we distract ourselves into oblivion as if to avoid taking our predicament seriously. Another of my early teachers, Sharon Salzberg, tells…
The little way of St. Therese Lisieux is a path, she would say, of awareness and willingness, of gratitude and surrender, of confidence and humility; and above all, of love. When I remember this saying, my heart releases what it’s fixated on, and it’s almost always fixated or worrying about something. Sylvia Boorstein once quipped…
In an article on the self-help movement in New York Magazine back in 2013, Kathryn Shultz observed she knows people who “wouldn’t so much as walk through the self-help section of a bookstore without The Paris Review under one arm and a puzzled oh-I-thought-the-bathroom-was-over-here look on their face.” (Back when there were bookstores to hang…
On my first 10 day silent retreat, after days of restlessness and frustration, Jack Kornfield gave a very simple instruction, and something clicked. It went something like this: Take your seat in your human incarnation just as you are right now; you are already fulfilled, as you value that, you value yourself. It took several…
The prominent Buddhist teacher, author, and activist, Joan Halifax, on the day of this shooting tweeted “I want to live in a country that loves its children more than its guns.” I would like to wish everyone a thoughtful International Woman’s Day (today, March 8, 2018). Here in the USA, the #MeToo and the Time’s…
Your well-being is actually independent of conditions. As your practice matures over time, the feeling of well-being arises more frequently and in all kinds of situations. We have all we need to lead a fulfilling life now. If you can breathe, you can be mindful. We may feel a little chagrined finding ourselves in those…