Dear Thay, dear Sangha, Many times in my life, I’ve wondered: what is love? How can I love better? Lately, some of my dear friends have been faced with intense suffering. One friend is dying of cancer and his wife was just diagnosed with it, too. Another is having surgery…
Search results for “is nothing something”
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Pipe-Down Dharma
By Jarvis Masters When I awoke that early morning in my cell to begin my daily meditation practice, I tried to envision myself as a peace activist in the rough neighborhood of my life in prison. The night before, the cell adjacent to mine was filled with the raging screams and yells of a…
Everything Is Going to Be Okay
Somebody once asked me, “What is one of Thay’s characteristics you’d like to have?”
All Roads Lead to Plum Village
By Janelle Combelic Transformation Hall, Plum Village, 1991; courtesy of monastic Sangha I left Plum Village in August 1990 after three weeks at my first summer retreat, not knowing that it would take me fourteen years to get back. But those three weeks changed my life. I had started…
Support Monastics in Vietnam
By Susan O’Leary, Mitchell Ratner, and Members of the Monastic Community photo by Paul Davis On September 27, 2009, 379 monastics practicing in the Plum Village tradition were violently evicted from their monastery, Bat Nha, in the central highlands of Vietnam, by a government-organized mob. Emergency calls made to the…
Breathfully Taking Care
By Therese Fitzgerald After months of zazen practice at San Francisco Zen Center, I asked my teacher Richard Baker-roshi, "Do I really have to count my breath?" "Yes," he responded with unmistakable solemnity. I had friends who managed to count hundreds of breaths forwards and backwards, and others who described staying home just enjoying their breathing in…
Mindful Science
By Perrin Cohen As I was beginning insight meditation some years ago, my teacher Larry Rosenberg, originally trained as a scientist like myself, suggested that careful observation could provide a doorway to liberation and freedom from suffering. This suggestion sounded quite familiar. As a budding young behaviorist in the 1960's, I was taught, in talmudic…
Book Reviews
The Mama Bamba Way The Power and Pleasure of Natural Childbirth By Robyn Sheldon Findhorn Press, 2010 Soft cover, 272 pages Reviewed by Karen Hilsberg I met Robyn Sheldon when we shared a taxi during Thay’s 2008 tour in Vietnam. I learned that she is a midwife in South Africa…
Beating the Winter Blahs
It’s time to put away the holiday decor. New Year’s Day—with all its excitement and newness—is over. All you have stretching out in front of you now is…winter. Not the merry/exciting holiday winter—just plain old January and February winter. This period of time can feel dreary and low for many people,but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are three ways to beat the winter “blahs” that can help you to embrace, rather than brace against, this season.
New Mindfulness Centers in Washington State
Two new practice centers have opened in Washington State over the past year. Last autumn , Dharma teacher Eileen Kiera of the Mountain Lamp Community and her husband, Jack Duffy, Roshi, purchased 40 acres to establish a rural practice center in western Washington. Located in Whatcom County, the land lies on Lake Jorgensen at the foot…