Once when I was teaching at a Spirit Rock retreat years ago, Jack was giving the evening dharma talk, I was so tired that I fell sound asleep like a child listening to a bedtime story. I was sitting up straight in perfect cross-legged posture on the stage right in front of everyone in the… Continue reading →

Last Saturday, the InsightLA teachers gathered for another day of exploration of inclusion and diversity. Together we’re putting the magnifying glass of mindfulness on top of our organization to better see where any of us might be reflecting the conditioned racism of our society. With the heartbreaking divisiveness and suffering around racism so currently visible,… Continue reading →

Photo: Kobun Chino Roshi (far left) and Mu Deung Sunim (far right) pose with Trudy Goodman and George Bowman at their wedding reception. This past year, we’ve witnessed several Buddhist communities reeling from reports of serious teacher misconduct. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you remember that every decade there’s a spate… Continue reading →

Yesterday evening I was sitting on the beach at sunset, mesmerized by a flock of surfers bobbing on the waves, lit by the last pink light as the sun went down behind the mountains. I jumped into the ocean and played in the surf alongside some children I heard speaking French. A joyful toddler made… Continue reading →

Walking on ancient stone floors uneven from centuries of footsteps, stepping over bronze plaques commemorating trials and beheadings for high treason and state visits of yore, under the soaring vaulted beams of the 13thcentury Westminster Hall, the ceiling like a huge upside-down ship, we marvel our way through majestic medieval buildings gently sinking into the… Continue reading →

Our mindfulness rests on a foundation of compassion. It works like this: as we become more compassionately aware of our own suffering, we can perceive the suffering of others more accurately. A growing sense of being part of one family comes from cultivating loving awareness of our similarity as human beings, our oneness. As this… Continue reading →

I’ve been spending time with a close friend, a deep practitioner who recently had surgery. He’s in a lot of physical pain as he recovers. Pain is hard to bear. On top of that, we tend to judge ourselves for the way we manage it. Even the Buddha had backaches as he grew older; there… Continue reading →

Today is Memorial Day. Memorial Day weekend heralds the unofficial start of summer, time for beach, barbecues, blockbusters… But it’s also a day when we’re called to remember the men and women who died in all wars. To see some of their faces: http://thefallen.militarytimes.com. Regardless of what you or I think about war, about the… Continue reading →

At the beginning of each of our retreats for professional caregivers who work at the bedside of the critically ill and dying, I tell a true story about the nurses and doctors who saved my daughter’s life when she was 2 ½ and I was 24. I was studying with a developmental psychologist named Jean… Continue reading →

These words from the Buddha say it all: “Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with their thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of their awareness.” In other words, what we choose to pay attention to, becomes the inclination of our hearts and minds. (The word he used in teaching is “citta”, which means heart-mind). He… Continue reading →