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…
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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…
Heart to Heart
In each issue of the Mindfulness Bell readers take on a different topic, writing in short essays about their personal experience and their practice. We have covered the Five Mindfulness Trainings; now we ask for your thoughts on the role that art plays in your practice and your life. Keep…
The One Who Bows
By Ann Moore One day in January 2010, my friend and Dharma teacher Joanne Friday called me and shared that she had a significant birthday coming up, her sixtieth. Westerners are used to celebrating every birthday under the same zodiacal sign; but under the Chinese astrological calendar, one’s birth sign…
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.…
Remembering That You Have a Body
A Retreat for Software Developers and Designers Retreat for software developers and designers, 2015. Photo courtesy of Kenley Neufeld “I realized that I want to cultivate more joy, less fear, less self-loathing and comparing. And the way I use technology now is not filled with joy. It’s filled with duty,…
Compassion in the Courtroom
By Gerard B. Wattigny Not long ago, my job called me to sentence a man who was 76 years old. He had killed two men and wounded another. These shootings occurred in a small town where all of those involved knew one another. His son and family were very upset over the incident, feeling…
Wake Up Dreams
Wake Up Paris; photo courtesy of Wake Up Every year they ask me to write something for the magazine La Thu Lang Mai [the annual magazine of Plum Village in Vietnamese], and every year I feel confused. What am I supposed to write? Who is the audience? These are the…
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,…