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 →

The Power of Connection: Kindness and Compassion in the Digital Age | Jack Kornfield & Trudy Goodman at Wisdom 2.0 2018 How do we bring wisdom and compassion to our use of technology? There are many competing views on this. It is like the ancient story about six people who are blind touching different parts… Continue reading →

Not one more. We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of an assault rifle to save the lives of students. We cannot allow one more family to wait for a call or text that never comes. Our… Continue reading →

We left Kyoto’s budding plum blossoms and camellias opening under grey skies, a smattering of tears falling as I looked out the rain-streaked window of the train to Osaka airport. Although we were here for less than a week of rare, liberated wandering through Zen temples, gardens, ancient sculptures, paintings, walks, I felt completely at… Continue reading →

The Buddha’s original instructions for meditation, or dhyana, ask us to go into a secluded forest and sit under a tree, a quiet place to allow deep concentration. If you’ve ever meditated outside in nature, you can feel the support of plants, landscape, the earth, just as you are buoyed by different energy when you… Continue reading →

I’m in San Francisco at the Wisdom 2.0 conference asking how to bring wisdom and compassion to our use of technology. There are many competing views on this. It is like the ancient story about six people who are blind touching different parts of an elephant and describing what they discover. Touching the side, one… Continue reading →