By Michael Petracca I unlock the plover shed, a cinder block storeroom atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific. Through the shed’s salt filmy window, the sea looks glassy under a thick batting of overcast. Rust-colored kelp undulates slowly at low tide. Pelicans glide parallel to shore, pull up abruptly, plunge,…
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Sangha Dot Com
A twenty-first century phenomenon is the “virtual community”—a gathering of people who share a common interest and develop personal relationships, without ever meeting face to face—thanks to the Internet. For practitioners who don’t have easy access to a live Sangha, these virtual solutions can be a blessing—an electronic raft that…
Friends on the Path of Socially Engaged Buddhism
By Jack Lawlor Dean Kaufer; Soto Zen priest and teacher Taigen Dan Leighton; and Dharma teacher Jack Lawlor of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship’s Chicago Chapter at the 2012 NATO Conference protest march in Chicago Many of us attracted to the teachings of the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh have an interest…
Wholesome Boundaries, Happy Communities
By Dennis Bohn My first exposure to the Fourteen Precepts (as they were called at the time) was in a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Cooper Square in New York’s East Village. I read the First Precept, saw “not be idolatrous or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even…
Always Hug the Dharma!
Sangha Building and Growing Pains By Katie Hammond Holtz It is natural that we will experience growing pains as we go through the stages of life — and the same is true for Sanghas. If we expect our Sangha to fit our ego-definition of “perfect” all the time, we will…
The Joy of Practice Cannot Be Contained
By Leslie Rawls and Carl Dunlap, Jr. photo by Nyanayasha Shakya To our respected and beloved teacher, Thay Nhat Hanh, and to the stream of ancestral teachers who have preserved and transmitted the teachings, we offer an ocean of gratitude. From Carl December 5, 1988 was the coldest, darkest day…
Salt in Clear Water
By Jennifer Shumaker Driving from Arkansas through Taos and the Carson National Forest, I had plenty of time to fantasize about the next six days. I was on my way to a mindfulness retreat with Therese Fitzgerald, Wendy Johnson, and a group of practitioners from activist professions at the Vallecitos Mountain Refuge in northern New…
Free Where I Am
By Patrick Doyle I’m currently serving my fifth year of a ten-year sentence for armed burglary. I can get out in 2016. When I got arrested in 2007, I was an angry, young, confused gang member looking at a life sentence. I didn’t care about life anymore. I was adopted…
Finding Ways to Help
In 1975, Thich Nhat Hanh and I moved with several fliends to a house near Fontvannes, France. The war in Vietnam had ended and we were cut off from our country with no way to help. We named our community Les Patates Douces, Sweet Potatoes. In Vietnam, when peasants have no rice, they eat dried sweet potatoes.…
Ordination Gift to My Sister
By Megan Phelps Sister Thanh Trí and Megan, Solidity Hamlet, Deer Park, 2018 On September 9th, 2018, my sister was ordained at Deer Park Monastery along with nine other new monastics. It was an unusual experience to watch my sibling become a nun; I felt a mixture of pride, excitement,…