By Beverly Alexander I have had the pleasure both of owning a guinea pig and of being one. Greg Ascue, Jim Needles, and I were among the first to participate in a formal, year-long Order of Interbeing aspirant training program. As part of our commitment, we all trained and acted as Doans (meditation hall…
Search results for “is nothing something”
1403 Results
Healing in Vietnam
In early 2007 Thich Nhat Hanh led a ninety-day pilgrimage to Vietnam. Fifty monks and nuns from the monasteries in the U.S. and France accompanied him, along with a hundred lay Westerners, in each of four three-week segments. On this second historic visit to his homeland, Thay was also accompanied…
Prison Mindfulness
By Mair Honan A few years ago, the word "prison" arose repeatedly in my meditation. I thought it referred to an internal prison and laughed when the words "Thomaston prison" arose one day. Thomaston is a nearby state prison. I had no conscious desire to enter the prison and no experience in prison work. But,…
A Great Horizon
Plum Village Sangha in Thailand By Lynda Berry and Karen Hilsberg Temple Reflecting Pool, Pak Chong, Thailand; photo by Paul Davis In October 2010, Thailand welcomed the Plum Village Sangha warmly. An international delegation of about thirty-six practitioners from the U.S., England, Italy, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Germany, Canada, and Australia…
New Moment of the Heart
By Claudia Baker photo by Renee Burgard On April 9, 2005, I spoke for the first time to the son I gave up for adoption in July of 1970. I was nineteen years old when he was born. The last time I saw him, he was being carried out of…
World Beat Sangha Soup
Sangha Strengthening Weekend Retreat By Phuong Ai La and Nhu Quynh La photos by Ron Forster At Deer Park Monastery in May 2009, a new Dharma door opened for the World Beat Sangha from San Diego, California. Originally some of us had the simple wish to gather for days of…
The Community as a Refuge
You Are Not Alone Laughing with the tangerine in Chile, photo courtesy of monastic Sangha This article shares about the supportive and enriching experience of the Chilean Community of Mindfulness, the Sangha Juntos como un río (Together Flowing Like a River), and the virtual Sangha Mudita (Joy) that arose during…
Teaching the Whole Child
By Susan Kaiser Greenland photos by Allegra Greenland In classes with kids, I hold up a Quaker Oats box and ask, “What’s in here?” We get all sorts of answers, from Quaker Oats to lizards to spiders to candy. But we come down pretty quickly to the fact that we…
Caring for Mother Earth
Happy Farm Lower Hamlet By Denisse Aguilar (L-R) Margret de Backere, Steffi Höltje, Tabea Halfmann, and Andrea Schlüter at Happy Farm Lower Hamlet Twenty years ago, the idea of purchasing ecologically harvested food to feed the Sangha seemed far away. Twenty years later, in Plum Village’s Lower Hamlet, organic vegetables…
Letter to a Vet
By Alan Cutter I am now at a place where I can begin to talk about what the war has meant to me. I am facing the hurt and regret, and learning to understand how they have affected my family and my relationships with other people. Through owning up to the bad choices I…