Articles

Much of human suffering is caused by greed, hatred, fear and ignorance. When we let go of greed, hatred, fear and ignorance, and hold the world with compassion and tenderness, love, generosity and understanding follow, and this brings happiness. This is the way to be...

What if you could love yourself fully, including your imperfections? What if you could love others in the same way? You might fear that by loving your anger or laziness, your addictions or your anxiety, that you will never change for the better, that you will become...

Wisdom is not knowing but being. The Christian mystics instructed seekers to enter the Cloud of Unknowing with a trusting heart. The wise heart is not one that understands everything—it is the heart that can tolerate the truth of not knowing. Wisdom comes alive in the...

Guilt and anger and fear are part of the problem. If you want to save the world, save it because you love it! —Gary SnyderIt is easy to feel overwhelmed by global problems. Climate change. Conflicts across the Middle East. Racism. Homelessness. Economic injustice....

The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.—Mother Teresa Many of us wrestle with our response to the sufferings of the country and the world. What can we do in the face of poverty, disease, war, injustice, and environmental devastation?...

One of the deepest and most demanding aspects of Buddhist psychology is the experience of non-self. Ajahn Chah said, “You have to consider and contemplate this slowly, you can’t just think about this or your head will explode.” It turns out that it is not just our...

Dear ones, The year ends and we begin a new circuit around our own beautiful sun star, twirling amidst the galaxies. Take a breath, quiet your heart and listen deeply.There is so much coming and going, and yet…feel how underneath it all is a vast silenceand a...

  After I got the call that Ram Dass had died yesterday, I closed my eyes.He is still here.I could feel the vast field of love that was shining from Ram Dass when Trudy and I taught with him just a couple of weeks ago. And I always will.On the final day of this...

  If we cannot be happy in spite of our difficulties, what good is our spiritual practice? —Maha GhosanandaGratitude is a gracious acknowledgment of all that sustains us, a bow to our blessings, great and small. Buddhist monks begin each day with chants of...

As your spacious heart opens, you can rediscover the vast perspective you’d almost forgotten. A spacious heart reveals the spacious mind. This is the mind that, after you’ve stubbed your toe, hopped around, and howled, finally laughs. The mind that, when you are upset...

  Mistakenly, some people think that Buddhism condemns all desire. But there is no getting rid of desire. Instead, Buddhist psychology leads us from desire to abundance.The Indian sage Nisargadatta, one of my teachers, challenged his students, saying, “The...

  Modern society is periodically rocked by upheavals, whether by assassinations, war, political turmoil, or powerful economic and environmental challenges. In uncertain times the political climate can worsen these fears. Early twentieth-century journalist and...

  Who is your enemy? Mind is your enemy. No one can harm you more than a mind untrained. Who is your friend? Mind is your friend. Nothing can help you more that a trained mind, not even your loving parents. —Buddha What do we see when we look at our mind?...

People often prefer a very limited, punishing regime—rather than face the anxiety of freedom. — Jean-Paul Sartre Along with the joy of freedom is a fear of the unknown. Freedom can be both exhilarating and unnerving. The conflict runs deep. When a rabbit runs free, it...

  The mind creates the abyss, and the heart crosses it.—Sri Nisargadatta When we carefully observe our thoughts, we discover that they are not in our control—we swim in an uninvited constant stream of memories, plans, expectations, judgments, regrets. Observing...

One of the most difficult things about hard times is that we often feel that we are going through them alone. But we are not alone. In fact, your life itself is only possible because of the thousands of generations before you, survivors who have carried the lamp of...

  We human beings are constantly in combat, at war to escape the fact of being so limited, limited by so many circumstances we cannot control. But instead of escaping, we continue to create suffering, waging war with good, waging war with evil, waging war with...

Aversion, anger, and hatred are states of mind that strike against experience, pushing it away, rejecting what is presented in the moment. They do not come from without. This insight is a reversal of the ordinary way we perceive life. “Usually,” says Ajahn Chah, “we...

"As long as a society holds regular and frequent assemblies, meeting in harmony and mutual respect, can they be expected to prosper and not decline. As long as a society follows the long held traditions of wisdom, and honors its elders, can they be expected to prosper...

Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law. —Buddha Without forgiveness we are chained to the past. Individually we remain caught in the hurt and pain of our history. Collectively, humanity needs to learn...

When we learn about doubt in meditation, we can then learn to face doubt wisely in our life. Here’s how to start: begin by looking at doubt carefully and with detachment. Have we ever really observed the voice that says, ‘‘I can’t do it. It’s too hard. It’s the wrong...

  Whatever a person frequently thinks and reflects on, that will become the inclination of their mind. —Buddha Speak and act from unwise thoughts, and sorrow will follow you as surely as the wheel follows the ox who draws the cart. Speak and act from wise...

“Ultimately it is on our vulnerability that we depend.”—Rilke As children, many of us were taught courage in the form of the warrior or the explorer, bravely facing danger. In the Buddhist understanding, however, the greater courage is not demonstrated by aggression...

Consciousness is colored by the states that visit it.—Buddha "Eh," my teacher Ajahn Chah would peer at me when I was having a hard time, “caught in some state again?” In the forest monastery we were constantly being directed both to look at consciousness itself and to...

  No matter where we are, we can see the world through the eyes of love. Without love, everything is constrained, if not false. With love, we stand in the presence of all of life’s mysteries. We can hold a golden apricot, a worn baseball glove, a photo of a...

Gandhi said, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Step out. Fly. Even if you get burned, you can fall back to earth and start again. It is never too late to start over. Zen Master Dogen...

“In a world of tension and breakdown it is necessary for there to be those who seek to integrate their inner lives not by avoiding sorrow and anguish and running from their problems, but by facing them in their naked reality and ordinariness.” —Thomas Merton Anyone...

The present moment is the doorway to true calm. It is the only place you can love or awaken—the eternal present. You cannot know the future. But here and now you can create a life of dignity and compassion, a day at a time. You can plant beautiful seeds and learn to...

This human world is sometimes called the desire realm because so much of it runs on desire and wanting. How to relate wisely with desire and wanting is a central question to all who wish to live with inner well-being and freedom. We can start by bringing mindful and...

In Buddhist psychology, the instructions for thought transformation are very explicit. The Buddha instructs his followers, “Like a skilled carpenter who removes a coarse peg by knocking it out with a fine one, so a person removes a pain-producing thought by...

  Little fears cause anxiety, and big fears cause panic.— Chuang Tzu Although most of us have been deeply conditioned by fear, for the most part we have avoided directly exploring its nature. Because we are not aware of its workings, it is often an unconscious...

Imperfections are part of the display of life. Joy and sorrow, birth and death are the dance of existence throughout which our awakened consciousness can shine. Yet we long for perfection. The perfect partner, house, job, boss, and spiritual teacher. And when we find...

In popular Western culture we are taught that the way to achieve happiness is to change our external environment to fit our wishes. But this strategy doesn’t work. In every life, pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame keep showing up, no matter how hard we...

Every morning I awaken torn between the desire to save the world and the inclination to savor it.— E.B. White Spiritual life may initially be focused on self-transformation, but as mindfulness and compassion grow we naturally become attentive to the values of the...

In a psychology of liberation, selflessness is a therapeutic necessity. Even though the whole concept may seem initially frightening and confusing, it is really quite simple. It is only the small self, the self-centered “ego” that cannot imagine how we will function...

We all know about New Year’s resolutions and how short-lived they can be. Consider setting a long-term intention. A long-term intention is also called a vow or dedication. In the forest monastery we would gather before dawn in the candlelit darkness and begin the...

Anger is easy to see, and greed is more subtle, but delusion is the hardest. All the accompanying mind states get cloudy, confusing. — Ajahn Chah Denial arises when we don’t believe what is actually in front of our eyes. On a personal level, we can deny problems at...