Other People Are the Path: Relationships as Practice
When I was a novice nun, I was attending my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, whom his students call ‘Thay,’ which means ‘teacher’ in Vietnamese. It was always a great privilege to be able to...
Receptivity: Deep Listening as an Antidote to Reactivity and Violence
In these hyped up divisive times, there is an ever-greater need for tools to de-condition ourselves from reactivity. The practice of listening – within ourselves and with others – is much more significant than...
The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love
When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion....
Towards Liberation of the Voice
Spoken or written, our words have a significant impact upon others, as well as upon ourselves. It is vital to bear in mind that the exploration of the middle way applies equally to language,...
The Gratification, The Danger and The Escape
The triad of gratification, danger, and escape is one of the Buddha’s most concise and simple teachings for investigating everyday lived experience. This formula can be applied to every single aspect of our experience....
The Power of Relational Awareness
Buddhist practice can easily be mistaken for a solitary affair in pursuit of enlightenment. Yet this path—and its key factor of mindfulness—is at its heart relational. We first learn about the Dharma from others,...
Encountering Māra
(In the style of Saṃyutta Nikāya – Linked Discourses with Nuns): Setting in Tipperary, Ireland. Then, early in the morning, the practitioner Vince dressed and packed for travel, he checked-in online for the flight...
Equanimity: Dancing with the Unexpected
Equanimity is a sublime yet powerful fruit of our practice. It is our capacity to be vulnerable and sensitive, yet never knocked down; dancing with the changing and unexpected circumstances of life rather than...
Wild Awake: The Wisdom of Nature
A few years ago, I had a bit of a Forrest Gump moment. I was sitting on the couch one evening in Vancouver, watching Netflix with my partner, when suddenly something came over me...
The Power of our Minds
Lately I have found myself inspired by reflecting on the power of our minds. And the teaching that each of us has the capacity to awaken and become a Buddha. That Buddha is actually...