Practice Kindness

One of the many things that you can do for your happiness and the happiness of others is to practice kindness. Kindness has the capacity to spread like wildfire. If you are kind to the grocery clerk who checked you out, he or she will be kind to the rest of the people she serves […]

A Song For All Beings

Last Saturday night, I attended a performance of A Song For All  Beings to a packed house. Composed and produced by Jennifer Berezan and friends, A Song For All Beings is based on the Buddhist practice of metta and the four immeasurable minds or Brahma Viharas (divine abodes) of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and […]

Guided Meditation for Loving Kindness

This guided meditation for loving kindness was created by Michael Sealey and is quite good for learning how to give and receive loving kindness, compassion, happiness, abundance and healing and eliminating stress and anxiety. Michael begins with a soothing body scan that takes about 7 minutes. Then he asks us to bring into mind an […]

Get-What-You-Want Buddhism

Jan Nattier is a scholar of Early Indian Buddhism, Early Mahayana Buddhism, and Chinese Buddhist Translation and author of A Few Good Men (Studies in the Buddhist Traditions). She was a professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University and held the post of the Shinnyōen Consulting Professor (Buddhist Studies) […]

Joy is Great for Your Happiness

Did you know that joy is great for your happiness and health? That’s right! According to Dr. Lissa Rankin, MD in her book, Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself, people who experience a lot of joy in their lives tend to be happier, live longer, and be in better health than […]

Loving Kindness for All Beings

The music in this video is by Ashana from her album, All is Forgiven. The song is called, Loving Kindness for all beings! A friend of mine shared this with me for healing, relaxation, and inner peace. It was the one song I relied on during my recent eight weeks of cancer treatments. The words […]

Let My Heart Fly Open

Welcome to 2014. May this be the year that all your dreams come true. To begin the New Year with the right mindset, I’d like to offer the following metta practice. Metta is the Pali word for loving kindness. Loving kindness, in turn, is one of the Four Immeasurable Minds taught by the Buddha. The […]

Compassion With Thich Nhat Hanh

When Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh was in the Bay Area, he appeared at The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University with Dr. James Doty on October 24, 2013. Dr. Doty engaged in a conversation on compassion with Thich Nhat Hanh, known as Thay by his followers. They talked […]

What Gives Rise To Human Dignity And Nobility?

I just found this interesting book by Venerable Dr. K Sri Dhammananda Thero. He was a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and scholar in the Theravada tradition who lived between 1919 and  2006. He lived mostly in Malaysia and Singapore. There are many books to his credit. I stumbled across this one titled, “Human Dignity in […]

Mindfulness Is Not Just Bare Attention

Poep Sa Frank Jude is an OI1 member and a dharma teacher. He joined the conversation we had about the Boston bombings a couple of weeks ago. For example, see Don’t Despair – Take Action, All You Need Is Love, We Need To Root Out Seeds Of  Anger, and A Marine And An Army Veteran. I’ve been meaning to […]