Awakening a Fierce Feminine Buddhism
Every morning in Zen temples around the world, the names of the ancestors are chanted, honoring the lineage that has kept Buddhist teachings alive for 2,600 years. One morning, I was surprised to hear...
Blog
Reflections from our teachers
The Body’s Honesty
Have you ever experienced an emotion—fear or anger for example– but did not realize it until much later? It is not uncommon to live for periods of our lives unable or unwilling to acknowledge...
Clear Presence, Sweet Absence
A poet friend entered a contest to write a poem related to a particular image. The image was of a packet of mail cradled in a tree limb. She chose to write about the...
Potentizing Practice
You know that saying, be careful what you ask for? Once on retreat, I was feeling complacent in my practice. Meditation was fairly steady and peaceful and insights were flowing, but I felt too...
The Wisdom of No Escape
The meditation master Ajahn Chah would often begin his Dharma teachings by addressing the listeners as “my brothers and sisters in ageing, ill-health, and death.” Take a moment to notice how reading that impacts...
The Spectrum of Awareness Practices
Last year my family adopted a rescue dog, Bamboo , who has since wreaked havoc on my morning meditation practice. And in some ways my meditation is better than it’s ever been. I am...
Trust in the Goodness of your Practice
I feel more comfortable around people with flaws. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. – Augusten Burroughs. Maybe you know that starfish story? On the morning after a...
Mud and Radiance: a Whole Life Individual and Relational Detox Program
It is now so clear that the world is on fire, that we cannot look away. That’s how the Buddha put it 2500 years ago and it is why he proscribed a whole life path....
Understanding Our Mind: Healing Blocks of Suffering in the Individual and Collective Consciousness
I recently sat my first 10-day Goenka-style Vipassana retreat and found it gave me new and insightful ways to understand how to transform the mind at the base. Goenka-ji emphasized that there is a...
The Power of a New Year’s Resolution
We start a new year. It is 2020. Perhaps the intensity of environmental dramas in 2019 finally made clear to many people the vulnerabilities to life on Earth. It might be useful to make...