When I first came to LA to help my mother and daughter, I knew no one; it was a lonesome, sad time. I’d left my 30-year community of friends and colleagues. I said my farewells to my home at the Cambridge Buddhist Association, to our marriage and my wasband. I truly didn’t know, what will… Continue reading
This morning at dawn I brought cushions outside on the little cement stoop in front of my house to sit. I felt peaceful but tired, lackluster, needing to be refreshed by the cool air of early morning and the spaciousness of being outdoors. In the midst of jetlag and the busyness of coming home, I… Continue reading
Jack [Kornfield] and I just finished teaching a retreat at the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat in Spain, known to the Catalans as Montsagrat, “Sacred Mountain.” In pre-Christian times, the Romans built a temple here to honor their goddess Venus. A sense of reverence blesses our retreat as we sit on this mountain… Continue reading
“All the footprints of the other animals can fit in that of the elephant, the elephant’s footprint is supreme. In the same way, all skillful qualities are rooted and gathered in mindfulness, and mindfulness is supreme,” said the Buddha. Everyone and everything fits into the supreme ‘footprint’ of loving awareness. Wherever you’re mindful, loving awareness… Continue reading
When I was eighteen, I studied in Paris and lived at the Cité Universitaire where I met my French boyfriend, Daniel. Sometimes we’d reverse roles to dress up and go out to gender-bender clubs and dance. My hair was so short I looked like a boy – and it was fun to kiss Daniel looking… Continue reading
Jack and I recently led meditations for Tristan Harris’s Humane Technology conference. Tristan, a meditator and celebrated technology reformer, opened his talk with a quote from E.O.Wilson. When he was asked if we will be able to solve the crises of the next hundred years. Wilson said, “Yes if we are honest and smart. The… Continue reading
Most of us live in a busy, goal-directed culture. In our meditation life, that same goal-directed energy is always searching for a special experience, attainable only in the future; a state that’s higher, better, different from where we are right now. Fortunately, mindfulness of what’s happening in the present is both the path and the… Continue reading
Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream. So is all conditioned existence to be seen.—Buddha One morning, I slowly stretch and wake up, refreshed from dreaming I’m in Hawaii… Continue reading
Last night the moon rose huge and round, the third Supermoon of the year, coinciding with the Spring Equinox and Purim. The Book of Esther in the Old Testament tells the tale of this Jewish holiday. In a nutshell, the anti-Semitic Prime Minister decrees that all the Jews in the Persian King Asuerus’s kingdom are… Continue reading
I’m spending this month at Jack’s house on a writing retreat. Yesterday I finished a piece I’d been working on and, I had to admit, it’s not very good. This is the opinion of the inner critic, my own personal editor who looks over my shoulder and remarks, “No one would want to read this,… Continue reading