Archives for April 2015

The Task of Repetition | April 29, 2015   If we are to close the gap between ideal and actuality—between the envisaged aim of striving and the lived experience of our everyday lives—it is necessary for us to pay greater heed to the task of repetition. Every wholesome thought, every pure intention, every effort to […]

Sorrows No Greater Than Yours | April 27, 2015   You seem to be you and I seem to be me. My sorrows are no greater than your sorrows. Thou art beautiful, o my loves, as tears are. – Terrance Keenan, “A Sweetness Appears and Prevails”

To Be Called a Buddha | April 25, 2015   When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Do […]

Cultivating a Planetary Perspective | April 22, 2015   You can instill a view, but then there actually have to be processes like meditation that shift the way the mind relates to others. You can’t just say a lot about how we’re all connected; you have to actually offer tools for how you would become […]

Why Attain Freedom? | April 21, 2015   Sometimes people get very rigid and tense trying to be good, disciplined, and ethical. Tension can also arise when we become more aware of the immense amount of destruction—seen and unseen, intentional and unintentional—that our mere physical existence causes. From a Buddhist point of view, however, this […]

Receiving Love | April 17, 2015   Many people are extending love, the simple wish for us to be happy—and have been since the day we were born. What is remarkable to me is what happens when we are willing to notice it. And even more remarkable is what happens when we are willing to […]

The Three Marks of Existence | April 15, 2015   As your mindfulness develops, your resentment for the change, your dislike for the unpleasant experiences, your greed for the pleasant experiences, and the notion of selfhood will be replaced by the deeper awareness of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness. This knowledge of reality in your experience […]

Not an Easy Fit | April 13, 2015   Whether on the cushion or in the laboratory, Buddhism and science resist an easy fit. A good deal of Buddhism—even including, ironically, the very notion of buddhahood—doesn’t lend itself to scientific validation or materialist empiricism. Consequently, to make Buddhism fit with what is perceived to be […]

„What if our religion was each other If our practice was our life If prayer, our words What if the temple was the Earth If forests were our church If holy water – the rivers, lakes , and ocean What if meditation was our relationships If the teacher was life If wisdom was self-knowledge If […]

“What did the Dalai Lama say to the hot dog vendor? ‘Make me one with everything.’ It’s a joke—and a pretty good one—but there’s more to it than that. Becoming one with everything by seeing through separateness and rigidity is the heart of what I call inter-meditation. Inter-meditation means meditating with—the practice and art of […]