Thank you, Boston, for showing us what is possible amid chaos. We often aspire to the spiritual ideal of being able to offer compassion in the overwhelm of injury, destruction and grief. It is a message that we hear from pulpits and sermons regardless of spiritual tradition. And often, the...

One aspiration of a mindfulness meditation practice is to create spaciousness and openness in our everyday lives. Many times, our lives can feel beyond its capacity to hold one more thing that inevitably comes along, pulling for our limited attention and energies. Not only can multiple demands on our life...

Toward a Multicultural Buddhist Practice

"Sangha" is the word from the Pali language (the first language in which the Buddha's Teachings were written) which means "community," and specifically, a spiritual community of like-minded and like-hearted people. While it might seem like a no-brainer, it is important to remember that the...

Towards a Multicultural Buddhist Practice

"Dharma" is the word used to encompass the Teachings of the Buddha and the lineages which developed from them. The Dharma has always been about Culture.

In the previous article of this series, the Buddha's words were shown to have a direct relationship...

When asked to write something on same-sex marriage and Buddhist practice, I decided that I did not want to get into the issue of sexuality and the act of sex between people of the same sex. I decided this not because there is something to be avoided or be ashamed...

Towards a Multicultural Buddhist Practice

The three "jewels" or the Three Refuges is one of the core elements of Buddhist spiritual practice connected to all Buddhist traditions. In this series, the Refuges of Buddha's Teachings -- the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha -- are explored through the lens of...

Can we be inspired by our life? What does that mean to each of us? We can become distant from this deeply human phenomena of feeling inspired. The distractions -- of suffering and pain in our lives, the lives of our loved ones, and the lives of so many whom...

Our stressful and often oppressive world gives frequent messages, both insidiously subtle and explicitly harsh, for us to be someone who we are not, to do things to which we do not feel aligned, to think and feel in ways that do not make sense to us--in ways that even...

As we already are feeling divisiveness of current politics and upcoming presidential elections...

As we feel into pain and complexity of people holding seeming irreconcilable values which actually harm each other, on topics like the economy, immigration and same-sex marriage...

As even people's intentions for doing good in the world,...

I was looking at today's newspaper and was feeling the contraction from the barrage of intense, difficult and often extremely painful experiences that we have in our world today -- economic recession for whole countries; extreme financial hardships for many; ongoing revelations of atrocities in Libya, Afghanistan and other wars;...